What strange things survive in this world. Take Wisden's five cricketers of the year, the annual announcement of which still manages to generate column inches and debate. The rules remain as they always have been. A cricketer of the year cannot have been a previous cricketer of the year. It's an endearing principle but distinctly potty.
In fact, don't just take the five cricketers (for the record, Ben Duckett, Misbah-ul-Haq, Toby Roland-Jones, Chris Woakes and Younis Khan), take Wisden full stop. It is like a great aunt indulged at Christmas, who stubbornly insists on imbibing ginger wine that had gone out of fashion even before Christmases acquired a veneer of contemporary oenological sophistication. Year after year, auntie is wheeled out simply because she is auntie.
Which is not to decry either Wisden or great aunts, just that the former is a relic of days gone by. It occupies a past together with the FA Cup Final, a reminder of how there was once only one live football match per year on the telly (save perhaps the odd international) and of how once a year the previous year's cricket would be revealed for all to dissect and digest. Page after page after page of scorecards replete with their short reports. All our yesterdays of what must have been tortuous and chilly June days in Chesterfield as E. Smith of Derbyshire bowled maiden over after maiden over to J. van Geloven of Leicestershire, as the visitors ground out a snail-like 180 in the six hours (when lunch was always at half one and tea was taken at ten past four).
There is, nevertheless, a sense of reassurance. The anachronistic can cling to its past even in the present day. Tweaks mean that Wisden is no longer a yellow-backed housebrick-sized homage to empire that had long faded. It is now a yellow-backed housebrick-sized tribute to the empire having struck back, IPL, Big Bash and all. But with Cricinfo available at the click of a mouse, its inherent backdated-ness accords it more the function of coffee-table adornment than one-time cricketing avidity.
Still, traditions die hard, even more recent ones and those founded not on mouse clicks or tablet touches. Rather like the five cricketers, these have their rules, those which grant them a superior status. Cricket websites' best-of-the-year cricketers, even sports personalities of the year and, horror of horror, Eurovision song contestants have succumbed to the totality of technologies in removing or reducing the carefully weighed deliberations of judges, abiding with the letter of the rules (well, maybe not in the case of Eurovision). The great unwashed in cyber and text lands cannot be trusted to do likewise.
I offer a Mallorcan example, that of Fornalutx. To the confusion of many, most of them in Pollensa it seems, Fornalutx isn't the only prettiest village on the island. The fact is that Fornalutx is the only prettiest village. That's because the association which determines prettiest villages says so. It despatched clipboard-bearing judges to rummage under dry stones, ramble through orange groves and to reconnoitre the village's cleaning system in confirming prettiness. It is unique to Mallorca, and nary an inhabitant of social networks was allowed anywhere near the judges, lest they be contaminated by popular prejudice. The great confusion arose because Pollensa had appeared on one of those blessed website things, the ones where any old Tom, Dick or Harry can register his vote. Moreover, it more or less borrowed the prettiest accolade in extending the nominations beyond just villages. The prettiest villages' association probably needs to think about a registered trademark, if it hasn't already.
There is of course another way in which Wisden is a survivor. Its sheer physical presence. You simply can't avoid it, so large is it. Indeed, such is its bulk that it can be used to keep any door open and withstand up to a force eight gale ramming into the door. While other giants of the print media may have gone the way of all Wikipedias or just Google, Wisden's voracious appetite for paper keeps entire industries afloat.
It is this, the physical nature of the hard copy, that can seem the most curious manifestation of Wisden of the current day. Yet it is anything but curious. Tangibility, holding something which isn't a device and that has the essence of presence, accounts for a great deal, even today. So is also the case with much of what Mallorca churns out for tourism. The island may be poorly served by digital applications (those from official, governmental sources) but it is still weighed under by the amount of paper. Apps and so on abound, but promotional publications are far from being in retreat.
Why is this? The answer is easy. Tradition, reassurance, tangibility; all to be cherished.
Showing posts with label Traditions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Traditions. Show all posts
Thursday, April 06, 2017
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Driving The Rooster Of Pollensa Home
It was Willie Dixon who provided one of the means by which The Rolling Stones demonstrated that they were originally a blues group. In Little Red Rooster, Mick, as had been the case with Willie himself, pleaded for anyone seeing his little red rooster to drive it home. This was because, as Mick and Willie informed us, there had been no peace in the farmyard since the little red rooster had been gone.
The little red rooster of Pollensa is now typically driven home. Or at least to a finca belonging to the conqueror of the Sant Antoni pine on top of which the rooster (some say cock) had been too lazy to "crow for day" because it had been stuck in a bag. Well, it's always possible that it had crowed earlier on, but by seven in the evening, it would indeed have been too lazy. Once upon a time, the cock would have been driven home and ended up dead meat to be served on a plate. Not now. The cock has his own finca yard home, unless another cock from on top of the Sant Antoni pine is brought along to share the same living space and promptly kills him. Which has happened in the past.
The fact that the cock is now typically allowed to grow and crow old gracefully hasn't persuaded opponents of the pine climb that all is right in an animal-welfare style. The Alternativa per Pollença party, perfectly capable of starting a political fight - and often with very good justification - in a bag empty of a cock or anything else, has registered a motion to be debated at the next council meeting. It says that the use of a cock aloft the pine in the Plaça Vella each Sant Antoni Day in January breaches the 1992 animal-protection law.
The party objects to the use of a cock for purposes of "simple entertainment", observing that it can suffer if it is thrown or falls from the top of the pine. But the objection is based more on a point of law, and it is the one contained in the 1992 act under which traditions involving animals are defined. In itself, this is a curious approach to setting law, a seemingly arbitrary longevity established as a threshold for defining tradition or not. The law states that an act, such as the use of a cock at the Sant Antoni fiesta, can be deemed an exemption if there is evidence of one hundred years uninterrupted use. If there isn't evidence, then the involvement of live animals on fiesta occasions is proscribed.
This is the situation in Can Picafort. The use of real ducks for the mid-August swim was finally stopped ten years ago, the town hall in Santa Margalida having consistently ignored the law. Only when legal action was being taken seriously did the town hall comply. There are those in Santa Margalida, and not just at the town hall, who want the law amended and have proposed that the 100-year threshold is reduced, the point being that the earliest evidence of the ducks and swim comes from the 1930s.
As far as the cock of Pollensa is concerned, there is little documentary evidence to back up how long the cock has been a feature of the pine climb. Indeed there is little evidence that shows when the climb started (with or without a cock). A newspaper report from the early twentieth century appears to be one of the few actual references.
The Alternativa is pursuing a line that it adopted ten years ago. On its Urxella blog in March 2007, it referred to an official complaint lodged with the Balearic government by ANPBA, the national association for the protection and welfare of animals, and also to an initiative by the town hall itself (in 2004) to prevent actions that cause suffering to animals. Proceedings were to have been initiated to withdraw the cock, but these were not seen through, the suggestion having been that it would have been a vote loser.
In 2010, it would seem that the town hall was in fact fined for breaching the animal-protection law and that there is also an open case for the same reason that is outstanding since 2015. At the start of that year, the Baldea animal-rights group proposed to the town hall that the cock should be substituted by a rag-doll version. It set out seven ways in which the law was being violated, referring, for example, to "unnatural treatment" by suspending the cock at a height of some twenty metres on top of the pine. To authorise such "illegality" would warrant a charge of abuse of public office.
A hundred years or not, why should longevity have anything to do with it? Should the little red rooster stay in the farmyard and never need to be driven home?
The little red rooster of Pollensa is now typically driven home. Or at least to a finca belonging to the conqueror of the Sant Antoni pine on top of which the rooster (some say cock) had been too lazy to "crow for day" because it had been stuck in a bag. Well, it's always possible that it had crowed earlier on, but by seven in the evening, it would indeed have been too lazy. Once upon a time, the cock would have been driven home and ended up dead meat to be served on a plate. Not now. The cock has his own finca yard home, unless another cock from on top of the Sant Antoni pine is brought along to share the same living space and promptly kills him. Which has happened in the past.
The fact that the cock is now typically allowed to grow and crow old gracefully hasn't persuaded opponents of the pine climb that all is right in an animal-welfare style. The Alternativa per Pollença party, perfectly capable of starting a political fight - and often with very good justification - in a bag empty of a cock or anything else, has registered a motion to be debated at the next council meeting. It says that the use of a cock aloft the pine in the Plaça Vella each Sant Antoni Day in January breaches the 1992 animal-protection law.
The party objects to the use of a cock for purposes of "simple entertainment", observing that it can suffer if it is thrown or falls from the top of the pine. But the objection is based more on a point of law, and it is the one contained in the 1992 act under which traditions involving animals are defined. In itself, this is a curious approach to setting law, a seemingly arbitrary longevity established as a threshold for defining tradition or not. The law states that an act, such as the use of a cock at the Sant Antoni fiesta, can be deemed an exemption if there is evidence of one hundred years uninterrupted use. If there isn't evidence, then the involvement of live animals on fiesta occasions is proscribed.
This is the situation in Can Picafort. The use of real ducks for the mid-August swim was finally stopped ten years ago, the town hall in Santa Margalida having consistently ignored the law. Only when legal action was being taken seriously did the town hall comply. There are those in Santa Margalida, and not just at the town hall, who want the law amended and have proposed that the 100-year threshold is reduced, the point being that the earliest evidence of the ducks and swim comes from the 1930s.
As far as the cock of Pollensa is concerned, there is little documentary evidence to back up how long the cock has been a feature of the pine climb. Indeed there is little evidence that shows when the climb started (with or without a cock). A newspaper report from the early twentieth century appears to be one of the few actual references.
The Alternativa is pursuing a line that it adopted ten years ago. On its Urxella blog in March 2007, it referred to an official complaint lodged with the Balearic government by ANPBA, the national association for the protection and welfare of animals, and also to an initiative by the town hall itself (in 2004) to prevent actions that cause suffering to animals. Proceedings were to have been initiated to withdraw the cock, but these were not seen through, the suggestion having been that it would have been a vote loser.
In 2010, it would seem that the town hall was in fact fined for breaching the animal-protection law and that there is also an open case for the same reason that is outstanding since 2015. At the start of that year, the Baldea animal-rights group proposed to the town hall that the cock should be substituted by a rag-doll version. It set out seven ways in which the law was being violated, referring, for example, to "unnatural treatment" by suspending the cock at a height of some twenty metres on top of the pine. To authorise such "illegality" would warrant a charge of abuse of public office.
A hundred years or not, why should longevity have anything to do with it? Should the little red rooster stay in the farmyard and never need to be driven home?
Monday, April 18, 2016
The Changing Traditions Of Fiestas
The Mallorcan fiesta is an all-year-round occurrence. Arguably, it is never more spectacular than in January, a month when comparatively few visitors witness the demonic happenings on behalf of the saints Antony and Sebastian, breathe in the smoke of the bonfires and listen to the music - contemporary and ancient - in squares across the island. But it is summer that is most closely associated with fiesta. The word has an almost onomatopoeic quality: its sound is one of summer suffused with vibrant colours, embraced by the heat of the night and the literalism of its meaning - party.
The fiesta is of course more than its contemporary manifestations of DJs, Zumba sessions and children's entertainment gangs. It is tradition, rooted in religious ceremonies and in the idiosyncrasies of island culture. In the recent past - since the late 1970s at least - it has also been the heartbeat of revivalism. The soul of Mallorca was rediscovered. From the ashes of industrial upheaval that caused migration from the fields to the tourist empires of the coasts came the Phoenix of the return of traditional symbols - the instruments (such as the xeremia pipes), the curious and the bizarre (demons, big heads), the folk dances in their various guises. None of this had died out, but much of it had become sidelined in the rush towards a new age of touristic gold in the (some anyway) manufactured resorts.
This process of rediscovery over the past four decades or so has to be considered in the context of current-day developments. They are ones which seek to amend tradition or even eliminate it. And they all come with degrees of argument or controversy attached.
In the town of Alaro, for example, the town hall wants women to be part of the cossier folk dance troupe. Heaven forfend! The townsfolk are said to be divided on the matter, though there appear to be more in favour than against. In an age of equality, the majority view is likely to prevail, and who is to say that it should not. The Alaro case, however, and when set against other arguments, can seem minor, for there are more controversial matters at stake.
Take Soller and its Firó fiesta in May. The showpiece is the Moors and Christians battle, the grandest of all the island battles between invaders and defenders. Bar owners in the Plaça Constitució, the setting for the climax, are unhappy at proposals that they close for a time. Theirs is a commercial controversy, not one to do with tradition. There is another: the simulation of the hanging of peasants by the invading Moors. There have been calls for this to be stopped. They have been made not on the grounds of any political correctness but because of the sensitivities of some: psychological effects or sad reminders of a suicide. The town hall has listened. The hangings will continue.
And then there are fiestas with animals. The controversy is being played out in the Balearic parliament. An amendment to the animal protection act would see the end to any fiesta display that might entail animal suffering. Principally and most obviously this refers to bulls; indeed, bulls are the reason why the amendment is to come before parliament and will surely be approved.
Bullfighting will cease to be. Some will lament its passing. Many more will not. But the ban raises a question about tradition. Is tradition finite? Can it be said to be outdated and to have run its course? There is almost certainly a majority view that it can and should be consigned to the past when it involves bulls. But the people of Fornalutx, with its bull-run the centrepiece of the summer fiesta, are less inclined to this view. While outsiders look on and see barbarism, the villagers see tradition. It will be banned.
But the amendment may affect all manner of other fiesta traditions. Will the live cockerel at the summit of Pollensa's greasy pine of Sant Antoni become history? There are those who have made the case in the past for it being so. They have invoked the ban (now some ten years old) regarding the release of live ducks for the Can Picafort swim of high summer. Yet there is a rule that applies. More than one hundred years of tradition, and the animal tradition is permitted. This is the case in Pollensa but is not in Can Picafort.
There is no rule which says that tradition has to be for all time. No rule which says that tradition cannot be amended. There are traditions worth fighting for and maintaining. There are others which are not.
The fiesta is of course more than its contemporary manifestations of DJs, Zumba sessions and children's entertainment gangs. It is tradition, rooted in religious ceremonies and in the idiosyncrasies of island culture. In the recent past - since the late 1970s at least - it has also been the heartbeat of revivalism. The soul of Mallorca was rediscovered. From the ashes of industrial upheaval that caused migration from the fields to the tourist empires of the coasts came the Phoenix of the return of traditional symbols - the instruments (such as the xeremia pipes), the curious and the bizarre (demons, big heads), the folk dances in their various guises. None of this had died out, but much of it had become sidelined in the rush towards a new age of touristic gold in the (some anyway) manufactured resorts.
This process of rediscovery over the past four decades or so has to be considered in the context of current-day developments. They are ones which seek to amend tradition or even eliminate it. And they all come with degrees of argument or controversy attached.
In the town of Alaro, for example, the town hall wants women to be part of the cossier folk dance troupe. Heaven forfend! The townsfolk are said to be divided on the matter, though there appear to be more in favour than against. In an age of equality, the majority view is likely to prevail, and who is to say that it should not. The Alaro case, however, and when set against other arguments, can seem minor, for there are more controversial matters at stake.
Take Soller and its Firó fiesta in May. The showpiece is the Moors and Christians battle, the grandest of all the island battles between invaders and defenders. Bar owners in the Plaça Constitució, the setting for the climax, are unhappy at proposals that they close for a time. Theirs is a commercial controversy, not one to do with tradition. There is another: the simulation of the hanging of peasants by the invading Moors. There have been calls for this to be stopped. They have been made not on the grounds of any political correctness but because of the sensitivities of some: psychological effects or sad reminders of a suicide. The town hall has listened. The hangings will continue.
And then there are fiestas with animals. The controversy is being played out in the Balearic parliament. An amendment to the animal protection act would see the end to any fiesta display that might entail animal suffering. Principally and most obviously this refers to bulls; indeed, bulls are the reason why the amendment is to come before parliament and will surely be approved.
Bullfighting will cease to be. Some will lament its passing. Many more will not. But the ban raises a question about tradition. Is tradition finite? Can it be said to be outdated and to have run its course? There is almost certainly a majority view that it can and should be consigned to the past when it involves bulls. But the people of Fornalutx, with its bull-run the centrepiece of the summer fiesta, are less inclined to this view. While outsiders look on and see barbarism, the villagers see tradition. It will be banned.
But the amendment may affect all manner of other fiesta traditions. Will the live cockerel at the summit of Pollensa's greasy pine of Sant Antoni become history? There are those who have made the case in the past for it being so. They have invoked the ban (now some ten years old) regarding the release of live ducks for the Can Picafort swim of high summer. Yet there is a rule that applies. More than one hundred years of tradition, and the animal tradition is permitted. This is the case in Pollensa but is not in Can Picafort.
There is no rule which says that tradition has to be for all time. No rule which says that tradition cannot be amended. There are traditions worth fighting for and maintaining. There are others which are not.
Monday, December 28, 2015
Oddities Of 2015
Some examples of the varied and sometimes unusual past and present in Mallorca that appeared in my Enjoying Majorca column in the Bulletin.
The alternative fiesta of Sant Canut that competes with Palma's Sant Sebastià in January. "Being a saint, sort of, Sant Canut comes in the form of an image to be carried by the faithful. Dressed in a white, druidic gown with very long black hair, he holds an oversized joint; a very oversized joint."
The Portol (Marratxi) sardine tradition for the end of Carnival. "The Portol sardine, as is the case with some sardines elsewhere, doesn't actually get buried. The Mallorcans enjoy nothing more than setting fire to something, and little excuse is needed for a festivity to feature a roaring bonfire. The comedy sardine is toast, its final moments being marked by the sound of a trumpet reveille."
The "picadors". Not the lancing horsemen of the bullfight, but ... "The picador was the sleazy, smarmy, greasy Latin lover, the tourist gigolo of legend. He wasn't a myth. He genuinely did exist. And there were few places where he existed in greater number than in Mallorca (of the 1960s)."
Mallorca's bulldog spirit: its bulldog. "This canine, which came from guard dogs that were on King Jaume I's ships, is considered to be the only dog that is native to Mallorca. Its name is the Ca de Bou: bulldog. It has another name, and that is the Dogo Mallorquín."
The Duke of Swing. "A waiter in the San Pedro (Puig de Sant Pere) area of Palma. His name was Pedro (or Pere) Bonet." He was born in 1917 and at the start of the 1930s he began to be exposed to the music and entertainment of Fred Astaire, Django Reinhardt and the King of Swing, Benny Goodman. "Bonet de San Pedro was to eventually join this unofficial royalty: he became the 'Duke of Swing'."
The weirdness of Hairy John. "Sant Joan Pelós, Saint John the Hairy. He has been around for centuries and on the feast day of Saint John (the Baptist), he prances around in Felanitx once more, wearing his strange mask and then handing out carnations to the spectators. His whole demeanour, his whole idiot-dancing style, plus the flowers make him a dead ringer for a flower power hippy of the late 1960s."
Moscari's bachelor boys and girls. The day of Santa Anna (26 July) is also the day of the "Fadrí" in Moscari: bachelor boys and bachelor girls, aka "fadrins" and "fadrines". No one seems to know why this day is as it is, but whatever the origins, at ten in the morning the "Fadrí Major" appears: the chief bachelor boy. He carries a reed adorned with ribbons and flowers and is joined by "fadrins" and "fadrines" in traditional dress.
The Embala't of Sencelles. "There is little about it which makes much sense. What have mobylette motor cycles got to do with anything? Who knows, but there they are from some time after midday, hurtling around the streets while their riders are fired at with water pistols. The streets and roads get semi-flooded and will later on have more water deposited on them when the bales of packed hay arrive in town. And these come thanks to two teams - a male and female one. The two bales are then wheeled into the town's centre and unwrapped. This is when the battle kicks off. What does it entail? Nothing, other than chucking hay and smothering someone in it."
The Esporles sweet fair. "A giant sweet shop and a magician's bakery. Sugar, cream, chocolate, custards, this is a wonderland conjured up by some candy wizard. This is Esporles on the first Sunday in October: Mallorca's tribute to all our yesterdays of the pick 'n' mix and the corner shop with its penny-costing flying saucers and pink shrimps."
Jimi Hendrix in 1968. "The story of the Sgt. Pepper's gig has it that Hendrix cracked the walls with the volume that came out of his Marshall and Sound City speakers. Those attending were mostly British tourists. Hendrix was all but unknown in Mallorca, save for the likes of various locally based musicians, among whom were a couple of members of Los Bravos. After the performance - legend has it - Hendrix was involved in a night of decadence with four Swedish young ladies."
The alternative fiesta of Sant Canut that competes with Palma's Sant Sebastià in January. "Being a saint, sort of, Sant Canut comes in the form of an image to be carried by the faithful. Dressed in a white, druidic gown with very long black hair, he holds an oversized joint; a very oversized joint."
The Portol (Marratxi) sardine tradition for the end of Carnival. "The Portol sardine, as is the case with some sardines elsewhere, doesn't actually get buried. The Mallorcans enjoy nothing more than setting fire to something, and little excuse is needed for a festivity to feature a roaring bonfire. The comedy sardine is toast, its final moments being marked by the sound of a trumpet reveille."
The "picadors". Not the lancing horsemen of the bullfight, but ... "The picador was the sleazy, smarmy, greasy Latin lover, the tourist gigolo of legend. He wasn't a myth. He genuinely did exist. And there were few places where he existed in greater number than in Mallorca (of the 1960s)."
Mallorca's bulldog spirit: its bulldog. "This canine, which came from guard dogs that were on King Jaume I's ships, is considered to be the only dog that is native to Mallorca. Its name is the Ca de Bou: bulldog. It has another name, and that is the Dogo Mallorquín."
The Duke of Swing. "A waiter in the San Pedro (Puig de Sant Pere) area of Palma. His name was Pedro (or Pere) Bonet." He was born in 1917 and at the start of the 1930s he began to be exposed to the music and entertainment of Fred Astaire, Django Reinhardt and the King of Swing, Benny Goodman. "Bonet de San Pedro was to eventually join this unofficial royalty: he became the 'Duke of Swing'."
The weirdness of Hairy John. "Sant Joan Pelós, Saint John the Hairy. He has been around for centuries and on the feast day of Saint John (the Baptist), he prances around in Felanitx once more, wearing his strange mask and then handing out carnations to the spectators. His whole demeanour, his whole idiot-dancing style, plus the flowers make him a dead ringer for a flower power hippy of the late 1960s."
Moscari's bachelor boys and girls. The day of Santa Anna (26 July) is also the day of the "Fadrí" in Moscari: bachelor boys and bachelor girls, aka "fadrins" and "fadrines". No one seems to know why this day is as it is, but whatever the origins, at ten in the morning the "Fadrí Major" appears: the chief bachelor boy. He carries a reed adorned with ribbons and flowers and is joined by "fadrins" and "fadrines" in traditional dress.
The Embala't of Sencelles. "There is little about it which makes much sense. What have mobylette motor cycles got to do with anything? Who knows, but there they are from some time after midday, hurtling around the streets while their riders are fired at with water pistols. The streets and roads get semi-flooded and will later on have more water deposited on them when the bales of packed hay arrive in town. And these come thanks to two teams - a male and female one. The two bales are then wheeled into the town's centre and unwrapped. This is when the battle kicks off. What does it entail? Nothing, other than chucking hay and smothering someone in it."
The Esporles sweet fair. "A giant sweet shop and a magician's bakery. Sugar, cream, chocolate, custards, this is a wonderland conjured up by some candy wizard. This is Esporles on the first Sunday in October: Mallorca's tribute to all our yesterdays of the pick 'n' mix and the corner shop with its penny-costing flying saucers and pink shrimps."
Jimi Hendrix in 1968. "The story of the Sgt. Pepper's gig has it that Hendrix cracked the walls with the volume that came out of his Marshall and Sound City speakers. Those attending were mostly British tourists. Hendrix was all but unknown in Mallorca, save for the likes of various locally based musicians, among whom were a couple of members of Los Bravos. After the performance - legend has it - Hendrix was involved in a night of decadence with four Swedish young ladies."
Monday, September 28, 2015
The Dancing Horses Of Llucmajor
The traditional players of a Mallorcan fiesta or fair are common to most towns and villages. The pipers - the xeremiers - are probably the most common, as nowhere seems not to have pipers. Giants, big heads (the "caparrots") are likewise familiar, as are the demons and the bands of music, though by no means everywhere has these: there are fiestas where they have to be shipped in from other towns or villages. And then there are the traditional players who are more obscure, who are remnants from many years past or who have been revived, but who are traditional to very few places. The cavallets, rather like the cossier dancers, are one such tradition. Arta, Felanitx, Palma, Pollensa, Santa Ponsa, here are where the cavallets have been maintained or recently invented.
These horse figures come from Catalan culture. The first reference to them was in 1424. In Barcelona there was a document entitled the Book of Solemnities, of religious rituals, if you like, in solemn honour of saints. The Barcelona horses, though, were not things of the church. They belonged to the Council of Barcelona, which deemed, six years later, that there should be eight of them in all and never more than twelve. Seven more years went by, and in 1437 the council ceded ownership to the Guild of Cottonmakers - the Gremi de Cotoners.
The cottonmakers are important to the contemporary story of the cavallets in Mallorca and none more so in a town not listed above - Llucmajor. Fifteen years ago, the tradition having been dormant in the town for decades, the cavallets reappeared and they were and are specifically referred to as the "cavallets cotoners".
It wasn't so long after Barcelona's horse figures first appeared that the tradition was exported to Mallorca, and this export, so it is believed, was to Arta and to Llucmajor. There was a link between the two towns in as much as both had Franciscan communities. In Mallorca the cavallets were essentially religious, as opposed to having been more secular in Barcelona, and in Llucmajor it was the convent of Sant Bonaventura where they became established. Documentary evidence of this was provided by a drawing made by the local notary and a reference to the dance of the cavallets in 1458. It is said that Palma introduced its cavallets in the same year.
But what did they represent? Though owned by the council in Barcelona, those first cavallets apparently took part in the ceremony to celebrate the martyrdom of Sant Sebastià (Saint Sebastian) and, so one version has it, they portrayed knights fighting against Turkish troops. This seems plausible, even if the enemy may be wrongly explained. The Ottomans weren't to be a factor for some years. More likely is that they were representative of the battles of the re-conquest of Spain from the Muslim occupiers: in Palma, the confrontation with the Muslims does pretty much explain the city's cavallets.
There again, why during the ceremony for Sant Sebastià, as he had been the victim of the Roman emperor Diocletian? There was perhaps some blurring of history or an invoking of Sebastian for his deliverance. In Palma he became the city's saint because of the miracle that ended the plague. Likewise, he could have been instrumental in deliverance from the occupiers.
In Llucmajor, though, there was a further blurring, as it is reckoned that the dances of the cavallets owed less to Catalan tradition and more to Italian. Whatever the precise origins though, the cavallets of the town became an embedded tradition which was certainly still very much evident some eighty or so years ago. There is a photo which shows them at a celebration in 1930. But as with other traditions the cavallets faded away, before being revived for the fiestas of Santa Candida in August, 2000.
The cavallets cotoners now dance on two occasions each year, and so on Tuesday they will be the focal point of the Llucmajor celebrations for Sant Miquel. Not all cavallets are children or adolescents. In Llucmajor they are, and the dances they perform have a feel of the fairground in the way in which the dancers dance round each other. It's appropriate. A cavallet is also a carousel, the fairground attraction of horses on a merry-go-round.
Photo: Wikipedia; there are other larger images available from the likes of Ultima Hora and Diario de Mallorca.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Carnival Crazies: Burying sardines
Goya didn't invent the tradition of the burial of the sardine but he certainly helped to popularise it. Quite what its origins are is open to debate. The generally held theory is that it arose during the reign of Carlos III, so some time between 1759 and 1788. The king, the story goes, ordered that there be one final party before Lent and, because there was an abundance of sardines, these were the culinary centrepiece. However, because there were so many sardines and because the weather was particularly warm, there was an almighty great pong on account of sardines rotting in the heat. The solution was to bury them. As theories go, it seems as good as any, though the fact that there appears to be no documentary evidence to support this royal command could mean that it is just a tall tale.
Goya's painting (or paintings) most definitely assisted in spreading the sardine tradition and in also reinforcing the bizarre, profane and anti-establishment nature of carnival as a whole. Over the decades of turmoil through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, carnival and the sardine were symbolic of the people taking over for a short while and poking fun at those who often made their lives a misery.
The burial of the sardine is nowadays absolutely central to the carnival story. It clearly isn't a Mallorcan tradition as such, but it finds expression here in Mallorca as much as it does on the mainland. Consequently, this week there will be sardine-burial ceremonies, most of which confirm that, on occasion, Mallorcans are more than capable of acting in a totally bonkers fashion.
A sardine, being a sardine, is only small. As such, it doesn't command a great presence when it comes to a spot of street-theatre, fiesta-style celebration. In order to overcome its diminutive nature, there are mock, giant sardines instead, and nowhere does this in any more peculiar fashion than the village of Portol in Marratxi. Its twenty-third burial of the sardine takes place on Shrove Tuesday, the last day of feasting before Ash Wednesday and Lent kick in. At 6pm, as has become traditional, a giant, comedy sardine will be paraded through the streets, carried as though by pallbearers, accompanied by suitably solemn music from the local band (music of a tongue-in-cheek variety, if it is possible to describe music in such a fashion) and by ladies of the village, clad in black mourning dresses and weeping (in a hammed-up, over-the-top manner). The weeping, so tradition suggests, is all to do with the people being saddened at the end of the carnival festivities and being faced with the prospect of several weeks of strict religious observance (or not).
The Portol sardine, as is the case with some sardines elsewhere, doesn't actually get buried. The Mallorcans enjoy nothing more than setting fire to something, and little excuse is needed for a festivity to feature a roaring bonfire. The comedy sardine is toast, its final moments being marked by the sound of a trumpet reveille. Having committed the sardine to its fiery end, it is of course time to get eating. Cue, therefore, many a real sardine and any amount of strong alcoholic beverage plus, of course, the ubiquitous ball de bot folk dance.
The actual burial (or burning) usually requires some form of blessing, which may or may not be serious and may or may not actually feature clergy. In Pollensa, as an example, where a sardine is normally paraded with a collection of candles, the "clergy" can typically consist of blokes dressed as nuns and a priest who, on account of his appearance, would not normally get within a mile of a church.
So, take note. If you see some strange sorts wandering along the streets carrying something which looks as though it is destined for a funeral, don't be alarmed. In Mallorca, just as you are never far from the sea at any time of the year, at the end of the carnival, you are never far from a sardine.
Photo: Portol sardine, from Marratxi town hall, www.ajmarratxi.net
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Halloween: Blame it on the Beaker people
Back in the day, the celebration of Halloween in a Home Counties style consisted of the strange ritual of bobbing for apples and the lookout for witches who had taken to the night skies on their broomsticks. Apart from these minor treats, the main importance of Halloween lay with the fact that its arrival made clear that Bonfire Night was only a few days away. Halloween was an incidental celebration and one which, according to the Home Counties' view of the world, caused greater excitement north of the border. It was therefore rather like New Year's Eve, an occasion for Andy Stewart to enquire of the whereabouts of Donald's "troosers" and for the Jimmy Shand Band to provoke all manner of kilt-wearing and alien dance routines.
The idea that Halloween is all somehow an American invention is of course total nonsense. From ancient times, the Celts had been enjoying their equivalent of bobbing for apples, then Christianity religiously colonised Halloween and eventually gave it the title of All Hallows' Eve (borrowed from the Scots) and made it the first day of the three-day Allhallowtide extravaganza, followed by All Saints' and All Souls' Days. Even trick-or-treating, supposedly also American, was pre-dated by what the Scots and the Irish got up to. Halloween is thus about as old as Scottish hills or at least the Celts who would have taken one look at those hills and thought, I'm not climbing up those.
A Mallorcan view of Halloween, the politically-traditionally-correct view, is that it is indeed solely an American (and British) invention. There has long been a Halloween tradition but a very simple one. It has involved children being given sweets, the elderly munching on "bunyols" (doughnuts, some say fritters) and chestnuts and a certain amount of flower-giving. Allhallowtide, in a Mallorcan style, has its big day, and that is 1 November and not 31 October. Consequently, the alleged Americanisation of Halloween is all part of an assault on tradition in the same way that Santa Claus and Christmas trees have been imported in an attempt to upstage the Three Kings. It is tradition imperialism brought to you courtesy of Coca-Cola and Hollywood.
But Mallorca is a more cosmopolitan society than it once was, and its cultural mix at Halloween time doesn't just comprise fizzy drinks, horror movies and ASBO-case teenagers threatening to put a brick through a window if you don't divvy up. Lurking in this cultural mix is one called Spanish, and so if one wants to be historically accurate, the distaste towards Halloween from those of a Mallorcan fundamentalist persuasion may also lie with the relationship with the Peninsula and with the ancient origins of the Spanish and the Mallorcans. And these origins have a great deal to do with the Celts. Or not, in the case of the Mallorcans.
During the nineteenth century, the Spaniards generally pooh-poohed the idea that the Celts had anything much to do with them. However, historians and scholars were to reveal a rather different picture and they drew maps to show it. Great swathes of Spain (and pretty much all of Portugal) had, once upon a time, been inhabited by Celts of one form or another and so cousins of the ones in Scotland arranging their apples in a bowl of water at Halloween. Mallorca and the Balearics, however, had a separate development, a non-Celtic one. But then, if one really wants to go back into antiquity, it is possible to make a case for the Bell Beaker people, who were knocking around on Mallorca from roughly the middle of the third millennium BC, having been a sort of proto-Celtic people and thus part of what became a whole European family of Celtic peoples, a family which eventually started celebrating Halloween way before America was discovered and John Carpenter cast Donald Pleasance.
There aren't many, if any people who would hold up the Beaker people as justification for Halloween being celebrated in Mallorca and likewise there wouldn't be those who would point to a Celtic history in Spain as a justification. But while it is fair to say that current-day celebration of Halloween in much of Spain and Mallorca is imported, this isn't so everywhere. Galicia and Asturias are two regions which do have a tradition which reflects a merging of the Celtic and the Catholic.
But essentially, the Spanish spin on Halloween is that it is a day of reflection prior to the visits to the cemeteries on All Saints' Day. It hasn't therefore been looked upon as an evening to go out and party. Nevertheless, the Night of the Dead or the Night of the Witches has existed in the consciousness for centuries. It has long been one of the most mysterious nights of the year, a time when spirits can cross from the spiritual to the physical world. Not all Mallorcans might agree with the transformation of Halloween, but then back in the Home Counties in the 1960s all we ever did was bob for apples. Oh, and watch for witches.
The idea that Halloween is all somehow an American invention is of course total nonsense. From ancient times, the Celts had been enjoying their equivalent of bobbing for apples, then Christianity religiously colonised Halloween and eventually gave it the title of All Hallows' Eve (borrowed from the Scots) and made it the first day of the three-day Allhallowtide extravaganza, followed by All Saints' and All Souls' Days. Even trick-or-treating, supposedly also American, was pre-dated by what the Scots and the Irish got up to. Halloween is thus about as old as Scottish hills or at least the Celts who would have taken one look at those hills and thought, I'm not climbing up those.
A Mallorcan view of Halloween, the politically-traditionally-correct view, is that it is indeed solely an American (and British) invention. There has long been a Halloween tradition but a very simple one. It has involved children being given sweets, the elderly munching on "bunyols" (doughnuts, some say fritters) and chestnuts and a certain amount of flower-giving. Allhallowtide, in a Mallorcan style, has its big day, and that is 1 November and not 31 October. Consequently, the alleged Americanisation of Halloween is all part of an assault on tradition in the same way that Santa Claus and Christmas trees have been imported in an attempt to upstage the Three Kings. It is tradition imperialism brought to you courtesy of Coca-Cola and Hollywood.
But Mallorca is a more cosmopolitan society than it once was, and its cultural mix at Halloween time doesn't just comprise fizzy drinks, horror movies and ASBO-case teenagers threatening to put a brick through a window if you don't divvy up. Lurking in this cultural mix is one called Spanish, and so if one wants to be historically accurate, the distaste towards Halloween from those of a Mallorcan fundamentalist persuasion may also lie with the relationship with the Peninsula and with the ancient origins of the Spanish and the Mallorcans. And these origins have a great deal to do with the Celts. Or not, in the case of the Mallorcans.
During the nineteenth century, the Spaniards generally pooh-poohed the idea that the Celts had anything much to do with them. However, historians and scholars were to reveal a rather different picture and they drew maps to show it. Great swathes of Spain (and pretty much all of Portugal) had, once upon a time, been inhabited by Celts of one form or another and so cousins of the ones in Scotland arranging their apples in a bowl of water at Halloween. Mallorca and the Balearics, however, had a separate development, a non-Celtic one. But then, if one really wants to go back into antiquity, it is possible to make a case for the Bell Beaker people, who were knocking around on Mallorca from roughly the middle of the third millennium BC, having been a sort of proto-Celtic people and thus part of what became a whole European family of Celtic peoples, a family which eventually started celebrating Halloween way before America was discovered and John Carpenter cast Donald Pleasance.
There aren't many, if any people who would hold up the Beaker people as justification for Halloween being celebrated in Mallorca and likewise there wouldn't be those who would point to a Celtic history in Spain as a justification. But while it is fair to say that current-day celebration of Halloween in much of Spain and Mallorca is imported, this isn't so everywhere. Galicia and Asturias are two regions which do have a tradition which reflects a merging of the Celtic and the Catholic.
But essentially, the Spanish spin on Halloween is that it is a day of reflection prior to the visits to the cemeteries on All Saints' Day. It hasn't therefore been looked upon as an evening to go out and party. Nevertheless, the Night of the Dead or the Night of the Witches has existed in the consciousness for centuries. It has long been one of the most mysterious nights of the year, a time when spirits can cross from the spiritual to the physical world. Not all Mallorcans might agree with the transformation of Halloween, but then back in the Home Counties in the 1960s all we ever did was bob for apples. Oh, and watch for witches.
Saturday, October 04, 2014
Twenty-Five Years After: The Alcúdia Fair
The magazine spoke of the hope that the fair would continue over the following years, which of course it has, and explained that all the major houses of the island's industry - machinery, car sales and hospitality (all the major houses?) - had shown an interest in participating in the fair. It went on to say that it was hoped that the next fair would feature animals other than those in pens (like pigs one presumes) and that the fair would provide a good opportunity to promote tourism, though it added that it was taking place in the season called "baja", i.e. low.
Twenty-five years later, the fair still has its machinery - of the agricultural variety. It still has cars and, as part of a very much wider business element, it still has its hospitality industry. Animals not kept in pens there are, such as horses and dogs. And the more observant among you will realise that the fair now takes place a month earlier than it did in 1989. The start of October is still officially "the season", but it is "low". It's a question of definition but seasonal lowness seems to have crept forward over the years. The first week of November would now be "off", as in all but non-existent.
Apart from the range of exhibitors, the 1989 fair didn't really offer a great deal more. It was only over the two days as opposed to the three (well, more like two and a half) that there are now, and the entertainment didn't kick off until four in the afternoon on the Saturday when there was a street procession with the local band of drums and cornets. That, apart from some kiddies' entertainment, was it for the Saturday. The Sunday wasn't that much more exciting, though they used then to fire off rockets at nine in the morning, which they now don't. There was another procession, the inevitable arrival of the local dignitaries (a not-to-be-missed occasion at any fair or fiesta) and some folk dance. And that was your lot.
The programme that the magazine listed was, however, peculiar in that when it mentioned the children's party and the processions it didn't make any reference to what are now very established "traditions". In 1988, Alcúdia's new giants - L'amo de Jaume Panxa-roja and Madò Aina - had arrived, thus reviving a tradition of giants in the town that had stretched back to the seventeenth century. Also in 1988, the cultural association Sarau Alcudienc, who performed the folk dance in 1989 and who were also involved with the giants' revival, had conceived the big heads S'Estol del Rei en Jaume (the King James show), a series of characters based on, among others, Jaume I the Conqueror and the mediaeval polymath Ramon Llull. These characters have always been the main attraction of the fair's children's party.
The giants would have been in at least one procession, so would have been the town's pipers, also not mentioned. Yet, there were no specific references to them or to the big heads. It is curious, but there again in 1989 neither the giants nor the big heads were "traditions" as such. Or maybe it was the case that "culture" wasn't made so much of as it now is. But this would also be curious as Sarau Alcudienc had by that time been in existence for over ten years and was to the fore in promoting Alcúdia and Mallorcan culture, as it still is.
Why was the programme silent on what are now icons of the local culture? Maybe it was just a simple case of there not having been space in the magazine to include them. Or maybe in 1989 it was the fair - the exhibitors - which were thought to matter more. They were and are extremely important - there couldn't have been a fair without them - while perhaps in 1989 the fair was not looked upon, as it is now, as an occasion when there is a blurring between the fair as a trade show and the fair as an extension of the fiesta.
* Photo of S'Estol del Rei en Jaume from www.saraualcudienc.cat
Thursday, May 22, 2014
The Giants Of Mallorca
On 20 July this year, Sa Pobla will, as is customary, be honouring the feast day of its patron, Santa Margalida. One of the main attractions on the day will be Margalida. Not the saint Margalida, but the giant Margalida. She is one of a male and female gigantic couple. She takes her name, unsurprisingly, from the saint. Her partner, Toni, is named after Sant Antoni, ancient Egyptian monk, hallucinator of devils and inspiration behind the January night of fire.
The Sa Pobla giants first appeared in 1984 at the Santa Margalida fiestas. Thirty years on, they are being given a touch-up, a clean-up and a replacement. The piece of Margalida's missing ear will no longer be missing. Toni and Margalida will be able to perform their "dance", safe in the knowledge that they are once more fully intact, have been lovingly re-glossed with paint and have had bumps and scratches, accumulated over three decades, de-bumped and de-scratched. Local artist Andreu Company will have seen to it that they have been restored to their original painted papier-maché and wooden glory.
The origins of Toni and Margalida were not in Sa Pobla. They weren't made there and nor were giants invented there. They were assembled at a workshop for fiestas in Zaragoza (yes, there really is a workshop for fiestas) and shipped across to Mallorca, a pair of giants to tread a similar path and dance a similar dance to that which giants had performed well before them. The first Mallorcan giant was that of Sóller way back in 1630.
But Sóller cannot claim to have been where giants first turned up at fiesta time. Over two hundred years before, in 1424, Barcelona had arranged for a giant to appear at the celebration of Corpus Christi. Or rather, the church had arranged the giant's participation. It was all a way of providing some additional entertainment and so attracting greater numbers of the faithful. The tradition of the giant was, therefore, linked to Corpus Christi, but the giant wasn't the only entertainment. Other objects appeared as well, one of them having been the eagles of Pollensa. No one is quite sure when that tradition started. It is said to date from mediaeval times, in which case it was centuries before Pollensa first acquired a giant - at the end of the eighteenth century.
Sóller's 1630 Corpus Christi celebration was not confined to the adoption of a giant. The town also introduced "capgrossos" (aka "caparrots" aka big heads). Once Sóller had got in on the giant act, momentum was such that it took a further 23 years before Sineu got one. But, by 1734, Palma could boast four pairs of giants, and in 1763, Sant Llorenç took the revolutionary step of giving a giant a name - Puput (after the bird presumably).
Giants come in different styles. There are five main groups of Mallorcan giant. Perhaps the most traditional is the farmer's husband and wife, and it was Inca which first had a peasant pair - Abdó and María. (Abdó or Abdón is one of the town's patron saints.) Sa Pobla's Toni and Margalida are part of this farming wing of giant traditionalism. Of other groups, there are giants who have been inspired by legend and tales and those who reflect local trades or crafts. Capdepera has a fisherman and a "llatadora", a female worker of palm fronds to make wicker products. A further group is made up of historical figures, such as Calvia's King Jaume I and his wife, Violant d'Hongria (Hungary). The fifth group is a sort of miscellany, examples of which are Manacor's Vicenç, who is a Moorish soldier (he has a farmer's wife as a companion or perhaps she is his wife), and Muro's two pipers, Toni and Joan.
The giants are gigantic enough to stand, in the cases of Sa Pobla's Toni and Margalida, 3.9 metres tall, which is, for those still not entirely up to speed with metric measurements, 12 feet, nine and a half inches. They are, therefore, slightly less tall than if two Steven Finn cricketers were to be joined together. Their measurements appear, as do those of other giants, in their "ficha técnica". They both weigh 50 to 52 kilograms, which seems rather imprecise. Or do they put on weight occasionally?
Still, it is just as well that they don't weigh an awful lot as they do have to get moved around a fair bit, which probably explains why a bit of ear can go missing. They travel over land and sea as well across Mallorca to gather and dance together. The wonderfully weird giants of Mallorca.
* Photo of Margalida and Toni is from http://ladarrerahorageganterademallorca.blogspot.com.es
Saturday, January 18, 2014
How Old Is Tradition? Saint Sebastian
I have delved into my archives to look at what I have written about Sebastian in the past, and in 2009 I considered what "Ultima Hora" had to say about the Palma event. It was critical. It had a go at the organisers for not knowing what the people of Palma wanted and at the lack of international music acts and indeed at the preponderance of local acts to the exclusion of performers from the mainland.
The criticism was valid up to a point. In 2008, the music night had featured, among the acts on the nine stages, two British bands - ELO Part II and Echo and the Bunnymen. But then that was 2008. A year later, and things were different; financially different. Though crisis was starting to have an effect, there was still an expectation that Sebastian would be an aspiring international event which featured foreign acts and could therefore be increasingly marketable overseas.
After the 2008 event, the then councillor for culture at Palma town hall, Eberhard Grosske, said that he felt the time was right to re-think the fiesta. He also said that there needed to be greater promotional effort to attract foreign tourists. However, the re-thinking that was done was determined as much by finances as by fiesta content. Grosske's desire to see more promotion was lost in the need to scale back. Or this was how it seemed.
The presence of international acts on the music night added kudos, but for the 2008 event questions arose. One was to do with how much importance should have been placed on having international artists. Having one or two big (or biggish) names was never likely to attract a great deal of foreign interest. The fiesta would have required several more to have been able to do so, something that was never going to have happened.
A second question was more fundamental. What actually was being promoted anyway? Was it a music festival or was it a traditional fiesta? The answer would probably have been both, but herein lay a problem. Put contemporary and traditional together, and the promotional message becomes blurred. Most fiestas are a mix of the two, but their inherent appeal lies more with the tradition than with the new. Or does it, because there is a further question. What is the tradition?
The origins of the Sebastian story, in case you are not familiar with them, lie with events of 1523, when a bone of Saint Sebastian was brought to Palma by an archdeacon named Manuel Suriavisqui. It was a miracle bone which brought an end to a bad dose of the plague from which Palma had been suffering and which helped to eventually elevate Sebastian to the role of patron saint of the city.
Though 1523 is usually taken as the start of the Sebastian story, the celebration of Sebastian's feast had been taking place for some time before this. In 1451, for example, the Aloy bell at the Cathedral was rung to mark the solemn occasion. The patronage of Sebastian for his own chapel was awarded five years before the bone miracle, so Sebastian was firmly established in Palma before the archdeacon from San Juan de Colachi in Rhodes appeared with the healing part of the saint's body.
There have been various milestones in the Palma-Sebastian story over the centuries. It was 1634 when he was named patron saint, and there has been a fiesta ever since. In 1711, the chapel was destroyed by lightning and it took until 1757 for a new image of the saint to be brought from Rome. But coming much closer to the present day, it wasn't until 1977 that the celebration of Sebastian took on its current form. It was the folkloricist Bartomeu Ensenyat, who was known mainly for his promotion of Mallorcan dance, who proposed an "eve" (the "revetla"). And so this started in the Plaça Major and grew and grew to embrace the various other squares that it now does with its numerous musical acts. So, when we talk of the tradition of Sebastian in Palma and the newer, more contemporary aspect, i.e. the music night, this is less than 40 years old, which is not really long enough, you would think, to constitute a tradition, unlike the genuinely traditional, such as the demons and the "correfoc" fire-run.
But in fact, this isn't right. The two "traditions" are of more or less the same vintage. The correfoc is not even 40 years old itself. Demons have been around for centuries in Catalan culture, but it wasn't until La Mercè, Barcelona's major fiesta, revived the whole demons' tradition in the 1970s and also introduced the correfoc that this particular tradition took off and found its way over to Palma.
Sebastian is a grand fiesta, but in purely traditional terms, it isn't particularly traditional, unless, that is, one accepts that tradition can be 40 years old or less.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
The Illogic Of Catalan
The Catalan language arrived in Mallorca on horseback. Jaume I of Aragon rode across his newly conquered domain, dispensing Catalan linguistics and Catalan traditions.
There is absolutely no question as to the roots of Mallorcan language and culture and there should be no question as to what historically binds Mallorca to the mainland of Spain. This is not Castile and the Castellano language, it is Catalonia (or Aragon to be strictly accurate) and the Catalan language.
The usurping of this historical connection has occurred on different occasions over the centuries, and we all know about the attempts to destroy this connection and so therefore language and traditions during the Franco period. In the democratic, post-Franco era, Mallorcans have been able to resurrect in a fully open fashion their language and traditions, and in so doing, tourists, who in Franco times might well have been completely ignorant of anything cultural or linguistic that didn't bear the hallmark of Castile, have come to appreciate that local culture isn't, or isn't predominantly, a "Spanish" one.
Though tourists might have been unaware of an alternative version of culture, for the Mallorcans, the traditional culture didn't disappear. A particularly striking example of how the Catalan tradition still burnt during the Franco time was the staging of a glosadors contest in Felanitx in the 1940s, a time when Spanish Nationalism was at its most ferocious and vicious. In theory, such an event was not permitted, but it occurred nevertheless.
But then, what tradition was it that had been upheld during those years of prohibition? Was it Catalan or was it Mallorquín? Where the glosadors were concerned, and they were arguably the most important socio-cultural agents for maintaining linguistic tradition, it wasn't Catalan. It was Mallorquín.
It is this blurring of tradition that is at the heart of the endless arguments over language in Mallorca. While these arguments are normally styled as being between Catalan and Castellano, there is a whole separate debate regarding the Mallorquín dialect and Catalan. President Bauzá has recently reiterated his view that there are four island languages (or dialects) and he has done so by steadfastly ignoring the claims of Catalan.
The Bauzá line is, in a key respect, illogical. It pays no regard to the historical connection to Jaume I. Without Jaume, there would have been no Catalan in Mallorca and equally there would have been no Mallorquín. Catalan and Mallorquín are, therefore, well and truly part of a common heritage. There can be no debate.
But debate there most certainly is, and it is driven by political philosophy. Catalan is anti-Hispania, and is therefore, where Bauzá and others of similar views are concerned, a "bad thing". Catalan is anti-Hispania in being the language of separatism and dissent and so therefore a further bad thing. That Catalan bequeathed to Mallorca its own linguistic variant is airbrushed away in the pursuit of advancing a nationalistic dogma.
The more I come to appreciate how Mallorca was during Franco's time, the more it appears that, even if there was unofficial approval, the local dialects were not stamped on with anything like the ferocity that Catalan was; the glosadors staging a contest in a public theatre was a prime example. And it is this nationalist alliance between Castellano, the main language (despite Catalan being a co-official language), and the local dialects that represents Bauzáist philosophy. Unfortunately for the president, though, there are other political voices who proclaim the same philosophy, and they are very much to the right in a way that Bauzá isn't, because they are the neo-fascists.
Though it can seem illogical to seek to downplay the historical connection through Jaume and so downplay the role of Catalan, its traditions, its very being as a political entity as the motherland of Mallorcan language and traditions, I'm not convinced that Bauzá may not be right. The education debate, that of Catalan v. Castellano, muddies the water to an extent, and it does so because Mallorcan people appear to end up arguing against what many otherwise believe. And what they believe, at least mostly all I have ever spoken to about the subject, is in accordance with the Bauzá line. They don't want to be associated with Catalan. That may seem illogical as well, because of the historical connection, but for most Mallorcans, they take pride in Mallorquín and in not wishing to be ruled by Barcelona.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There is absolutely no question as to the roots of Mallorcan language and culture and there should be no question as to what historically binds Mallorca to the mainland of Spain. This is not Castile and the Castellano language, it is Catalonia (or Aragon to be strictly accurate) and the Catalan language.
The usurping of this historical connection has occurred on different occasions over the centuries, and we all know about the attempts to destroy this connection and so therefore language and traditions during the Franco period. In the democratic, post-Franco era, Mallorcans have been able to resurrect in a fully open fashion their language and traditions, and in so doing, tourists, who in Franco times might well have been completely ignorant of anything cultural or linguistic that didn't bear the hallmark of Castile, have come to appreciate that local culture isn't, or isn't predominantly, a "Spanish" one.
Though tourists might have been unaware of an alternative version of culture, for the Mallorcans, the traditional culture didn't disappear. A particularly striking example of how the Catalan tradition still burnt during the Franco time was the staging of a glosadors contest in Felanitx in the 1940s, a time when Spanish Nationalism was at its most ferocious and vicious. In theory, such an event was not permitted, but it occurred nevertheless.
But then, what tradition was it that had been upheld during those years of prohibition? Was it Catalan or was it Mallorquín? Where the glosadors were concerned, and they were arguably the most important socio-cultural agents for maintaining linguistic tradition, it wasn't Catalan. It was Mallorquín.
It is this blurring of tradition that is at the heart of the endless arguments over language in Mallorca. While these arguments are normally styled as being between Catalan and Castellano, there is a whole separate debate regarding the Mallorquín dialect and Catalan. President Bauzá has recently reiterated his view that there are four island languages (or dialects) and he has done so by steadfastly ignoring the claims of Catalan.
The Bauzá line is, in a key respect, illogical. It pays no regard to the historical connection to Jaume I. Without Jaume, there would have been no Catalan in Mallorca and equally there would have been no Mallorquín. Catalan and Mallorquín are, therefore, well and truly part of a common heritage. There can be no debate.
But debate there most certainly is, and it is driven by political philosophy. Catalan is anti-Hispania, and is therefore, where Bauzá and others of similar views are concerned, a "bad thing". Catalan is anti-Hispania in being the language of separatism and dissent and so therefore a further bad thing. That Catalan bequeathed to Mallorca its own linguistic variant is airbrushed away in the pursuit of advancing a nationalistic dogma.
The more I come to appreciate how Mallorca was during Franco's time, the more it appears that, even if there was unofficial approval, the local dialects were not stamped on with anything like the ferocity that Catalan was; the glosadors staging a contest in a public theatre was a prime example. And it is this nationalist alliance between Castellano, the main language (despite Catalan being a co-official language), and the local dialects that represents Bauzáist philosophy. Unfortunately for the president, though, there are other political voices who proclaim the same philosophy, and they are very much to the right in a way that Bauzá isn't, because they are the neo-fascists.
Though it can seem illogical to seek to downplay the historical connection through Jaume and so downplay the role of Catalan, its traditions, its very being as a political entity as the motherland of Mallorcan language and traditions, I'm not convinced that Bauzá may not be right. The education debate, that of Catalan v. Castellano, muddies the water to an extent, and it does so because Mallorcan people appear to end up arguing against what many otherwise believe. And what they believe, at least mostly all I have ever spoken to about the subject, is in accordance with the Bauzá line. They don't want to be associated with Catalan. That may seem illogical as well, because of the historical connection, but for most Mallorcans, they take pride in Mallorquín and in not wishing to be ruled by Barcelona.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
The Risk Of Tradition
While watching the Three Kings parade in Alcúdia on Saturday evening, an observation was made about the potential for an accident to happen, one that could involve a child scavenging for sweets being hit or run over by one of the floats. Around the time that this observation was being made, a six-year-old boy in Malaga was crushed by a float and killed.
Not all the Kings parades are as lax in terms of security as Alcúdia's is. The floats may have a "watcher", but this is all they have. Otherwise, there is very little control, except parental. The boy in Malaga, though, managed to slip away from his parents and joined other children in the hunt for sweets thrown from the floats. If there is insufficient security, accidents can happen, regardless of parental vigilance.
The mayor of Malaga has said that all safety regulations were in place but that the city's administration will have to look at its safety procedures in light of the accident. As ever, it takes a tragedy for changes to be implemented.
In Sa Pobla next week, thousands of people will descend on the town for the Sant Antoni Eve celebrations. If you have never experienced Sa Pobla's "Nit Bruixa", you will not know just how overwhelming the event can be. Some who have been once swear they will never go again. Those who do go, repeatedly, are aware of the weight of the crowds, but the unaware can be taken aback as much by the pressure of people as by the frights provided by the demons.
The town hall has announced its safety plan, one aspect of which is being able to evacuate the Plaça Major within five minutes if anything were to go wrong. The square has a capacity of 10,000 people. There are many others who aren't in the square. Moving that number of people out of the square, and speedily, requires that there is somewhere for them to go.
And what could go wrong? Very simple. Sant Antoni is about fire and very often about fire in confined areas and close to buildings. Remarkably, there are very few incidents, but they are not unknown in the various towns that celebrate Sant Antoni.
Another aspect of Sant Antoni that comes with a risk is the marauding fire-run by the demons. Some years ago, the fire-run looked as though it was under threat because of a European Union directive on pyrotechnics. So concerned were demons groups and others that a delegation was sent to Brussels to lobby against restrictions. In the end, the directive recognised traditions at fiestas and so didn't expressly proscribe them. It was meant, though, to have introduced some greater restriction on children's involvement. If it did, it has been ignored. At Muro's Sant Antoni fire night, as soon as the fires are lit and the demons start their rampage, any number of kids emerge, their hoodies doused with water, and dance like maniacs under the fire-spitting tridents.
The healthy disregard for health and safety typifies attitudes towards traditions, and inevitably one draws comparisons with elsewhere. There may well be some tightening of procedures in general following the tragedy in Malaga, but will there also be a rush to demand compensation and for criminal proceedings, as would undoubtedly be the case in Britain? Maybe there will be. In Britain, though, none of this - the parades, the fires, the fire-runs - would be permitted; certainly not in the ways that they are conducted at any rate.
Yet, there is a contrariness when it comes to welfare, that of both humans and animals, and it is a contrariness that stems from the arbitrary definition of tradition. It is one that legislates that if a tradition is a hundred years or more old, then the tradition can persist. If it isn't this old, then it can't. Hence, you get the ridiculous situation by which live ducks are banned from being released in Can Picafort, yet a live cockerel can be stuck on top of a greasy pole in Pollensa on the day of Sant Antoni (and the climbing of the pine is another act of thumbing noses at health and safety). Neither should be banned, in my opinion. Certainly not if bullfights and bull-runs can be allowed to take place. The imposition of a time definition on tradition is faintly hypocritical. There is either animal welfare or there isn't.
But such is the way here. No one, least of all me, wants the restrictiveness that exists in Britain, but occasionally, and very sadly, a death brings home the risk. And in Malaga, one small boy who will never be brought home again.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Not all the Kings parades are as lax in terms of security as Alcúdia's is. The floats may have a "watcher", but this is all they have. Otherwise, there is very little control, except parental. The boy in Malaga, though, managed to slip away from his parents and joined other children in the hunt for sweets thrown from the floats. If there is insufficient security, accidents can happen, regardless of parental vigilance.
The mayor of Malaga has said that all safety regulations were in place but that the city's administration will have to look at its safety procedures in light of the accident. As ever, it takes a tragedy for changes to be implemented.
In Sa Pobla next week, thousands of people will descend on the town for the Sant Antoni Eve celebrations. If you have never experienced Sa Pobla's "Nit Bruixa", you will not know just how overwhelming the event can be. Some who have been once swear they will never go again. Those who do go, repeatedly, are aware of the weight of the crowds, but the unaware can be taken aback as much by the pressure of people as by the frights provided by the demons.
The town hall has announced its safety plan, one aspect of which is being able to evacuate the Plaça Major within five minutes if anything were to go wrong. The square has a capacity of 10,000 people. There are many others who aren't in the square. Moving that number of people out of the square, and speedily, requires that there is somewhere for them to go.
And what could go wrong? Very simple. Sant Antoni is about fire and very often about fire in confined areas and close to buildings. Remarkably, there are very few incidents, but they are not unknown in the various towns that celebrate Sant Antoni.
Another aspect of Sant Antoni that comes with a risk is the marauding fire-run by the demons. Some years ago, the fire-run looked as though it was under threat because of a European Union directive on pyrotechnics. So concerned were demons groups and others that a delegation was sent to Brussels to lobby against restrictions. In the end, the directive recognised traditions at fiestas and so didn't expressly proscribe them. It was meant, though, to have introduced some greater restriction on children's involvement. If it did, it has been ignored. At Muro's Sant Antoni fire night, as soon as the fires are lit and the demons start their rampage, any number of kids emerge, their hoodies doused with water, and dance like maniacs under the fire-spitting tridents.
The healthy disregard for health and safety typifies attitudes towards traditions, and inevitably one draws comparisons with elsewhere. There may well be some tightening of procedures in general following the tragedy in Malaga, but will there also be a rush to demand compensation and for criminal proceedings, as would undoubtedly be the case in Britain? Maybe there will be. In Britain, though, none of this - the parades, the fires, the fire-runs - would be permitted; certainly not in the ways that they are conducted at any rate.
Yet, there is a contrariness when it comes to welfare, that of both humans and animals, and it is a contrariness that stems from the arbitrary definition of tradition. It is one that legislates that if a tradition is a hundred years or more old, then the tradition can persist. If it isn't this old, then it can't. Hence, you get the ridiculous situation by which live ducks are banned from being released in Can Picafort, yet a live cockerel can be stuck on top of a greasy pole in Pollensa on the day of Sant Antoni (and the climbing of the pine is another act of thumbing noses at health and safety). Neither should be banned, in my opinion. Certainly not if bullfights and bull-runs can be allowed to take place. The imposition of a time definition on tradition is faintly hypocritical. There is either animal welfare or there isn't.
But such is the way here. No one, least of all me, wants the restrictiveness that exists in Britain, but occasionally, and very sadly, a death brings home the risk. And in Malaga, one small boy who will never be brought home again.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, December 21, 2012
All I Want Is A Noddy Holder Christmas
The Mallorcans simply don't get the whole deal with Christmas. How can they be expected to when, as with so many other things, like cricket and queuing, the British invented it? Well, Charles Dickens invented it. Had it not been for the Cratchit family Christmas there would never have been a whole industry devoted to red wrapping paper with pictures of holly and Yuletide logs nor a Far-Eastern sweatshop turning out by the yarn load socks with Santa on them. Nor would we ever have had Noddy Holder, Noel Edmonds, re-releases of Wham or cards highlighting the Miliband family dental care.
There is only type of Christmas. One of getting totally slaughtered on Christmas Eve, having spent the preceding months schlepping around Arndale centres in search of gift-wrapped boxes of soaps and shower gels, and of spending Christmas Day attempting to devour a pudding the weight of a house brick and vomiting after too much Harvey's Bristol Cream and Stone's Ginger Wine. Dickens was a great visionary. He saw the potential for Christmas, and the potential came in the form of Tesco's drinks section.
Another of Dickens' great visions was to sideline any interruptions to the true meaning of Christmas that involved hanging around in a freezing church getting chilblains and mumbling the words of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful". It's this, the church bit, that the Mallorcans don't truly understand. Rather than spend Christmas Eve in determined and undistracted praise of the brewing, wine and spirits industries, they pitch up at church in order to hear some old bird warble on about the imminent arrival of the Apocalypse. (And UNESCO call this humanity!?). Some Christmas spirit I call that, threatening the local populace with the image of the Four Horsemen of Rajoy, Bauzá, Montoro and Aguiló crashing through the front door and having away with what few coins they haven't already managed to lift and, for good measure, the meagre collection of presents that the average Mallorcan family will have been able to scrape together from the local Chinese shop and car-boot sale.
Not of course that there are Christmas presents. Not at Christmas. Whoever heard of this? How can there be Christmas presents and they are not given at Christmas? The Mallorcans should be investigated for mental cruelty to their children by making them wait twelve days for their new iPhones (those privileged few who can afford them, that is). Mañana is all very well, but by the time the Mallorcans get round to handing out the pressies, Santa is long gone, has his feet up in Lapland and Rudolph is out to pasture for another year, doing nothing more taxing than keeping a wary eye out for a passing tourism minister with a high-powered hunting rifle.
The trouble with the Mallorcans is that they've got all their dates and timings to cock. And there is nothing more wrong than with those who insist on eating turkey on Christmas Eve. The British have never fallen for this flouting of tradition, despite the best attempts of the royals who keep up the pretence that they are still really German and good mates with the Kaiser, tucking into entire herds of Norfolk livestock on Christmas Eve and then jackbooting across the Sandringham estate for some fresh air on Christmas Day. And if they were true to their German roots, on Christmas Eve they would be eating the most revolting fish known to man, or other fish, the carp. Maybe they do, for all I know.
At least the Queen gets her Christmas message spot-on, as in it is on Christmas Day, unlike the Spanish King who does his when the Mallorcan faithful are back from or going to church to be warned about the Apocalypse. How on earth he's going to manage this year to skate around the little matter of the elephant I've no idea. And then there are the other Kings, the Black and White Minstrels whose arrival heralds, finally, the moment when Christmas really kicks in, albeit twelve days too late. But when one says arrival, where, in Bethlehem, was there any mention of a dockside for the Kings to pull into? Or indeed any tourist pleasure boat for them to arrive on? Sorry, but the Mallorcans have got this totally wrong. It's no use anyone claiming that the fountain out of the field, moor and mountain that the Kings had to traverse afar while bearing gifts means the sea, as I'm not having it.
The Mallorcans are getting there. Slowly, but they are getting there. They are beginning to understand that there is more to Christmas than a Gregorian chant and a bar of nougat. But there's one thing they'll never manage. There will never be a Mallorcan Noddy Holder. "IT'S CHRISSSTMAS!".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There is only type of Christmas. One of getting totally slaughtered on Christmas Eve, having spent the preceding months schlepping around Arndale centres in search of gift-wrapped boxes of soaps and shower gels, and of spending Christmas Day attempting to devour a pudding the weight of a house brick and vomiting after too much Harvey's Bristol Cream and Stone's Ginger Wine. Dickens was a great visionary. He saw the potential for Christmas, and the potential came in the form of Tesco's drinks section.
Another of Dickens' great visions was to sideline any interruptions to the true meaning of Christmas that involved hanging around in a freezing church getting chilblains and mumbling the words of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful". It's this, the church bit, that the Mallorcans don't truly understand. Rather than spend Christmas Eve in determined and undistracted praise of the brewing, wine and spirits industries, they pitch up at church in order to hear some old bird warble on about the imminent arrival of the Apocalypse. (And UNESCO call this humanity!?). Some Christmas spirit I call that, threatening the local populace with the image of the Four Horsemen of Rajoy, Bauzá, Montoro and Aguiló crashing through the front door and having away with what few coins they haven't already managed to lift and, for good measure, the meagre collection of presents that the average Mallorcan family will have been able to scrape together from the local Chinese shop and car-boot sale.
Not of course that there are Christmas presents. Not at Christmas. Whoever heard of this? How can there be Christmas presents and they are not given at Christmas? The Mallorcans should be investigated for mental cruelty to their children by making them wait twelve days for their new iPhones (those privileged few who can afford them, that is). Mañana is all very well, but by the time the Mallorcans get round to handing out the pressies, Santa is long gone, has his feet up in Lapland and Rudolph is out to pasture for another year, doing nothing more taxing than keeping a wary eye out for a passing tourism minister with a high-powered hunting rifle.
The trouble with the Mallorcans is that they've got all their dates and timings to cock. And there is nothing more wrong than with those who insist on eating turkey on Christmas Eve. The British have never fallen for this flouting of tradition, despite the best attempts of the royals who keep up the pretence that they are still really German and good mates with the Kaiser, tucking into entire herds of Norfolk livestock on Christmas Eve and then jackbooting across the Sandringham estate for some fresh air on Christmas Day. And if they were true to their German roots, on Christmas Eve they would be eating the most revolting fish known to man, or other fish, the carp. Maybe they do, for all I know.
At least the Queen gets her Christmas message spot-on, as in it is on Christmas Day, unlike the Spanish King who does his when the Mallorcan faithful are back from or going to church to be warned about the Apocalypse. How on earth he's going to manage this year to skate around the little matter of the elephant I've no idea. And then there are the other Kings, the Black and White Minstrels whose arrival heralds, finally, the moment when Christmas really kicks in, albeit twelve days too late. But when one says arrival, where, in Bethlehem, was there any mention of a dockside for the Kings to pull into? Or indeed any tourist pleasure boat for them to arrive on? Sorry, but the Mallorcans have got this totally wrong. It's no use anyone claiming that the fountain out of the field, moor and mountain that the Kings had to traverse afar while bearing gifts means the sea, as I'm not having it.
The Mallorcans are getting there. Slowly, but they are getting there. They are beginning to understand that there is more to Christmas than a Gregorian chant and a bar of nougat. But there's one thing they'll never manage. There will never be a Mallorcan Noddy Holder. "IT'S CHRISSSTMAS!".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
The Tradition Industry
There was this flyer in the letter-box. "Traditional Mallorcan cuisine." The words were in Spanish. You might think that advertising traditional Mallorcan cuisine should demand that the blurb is in Catalan and not in Spanish, but maybe the restaurant is owned by a staunch supporter of the Partido Popular. Anyway, let's not go there again.
The flyer was less a promotion for the restaurant and more one for a take-away service. "We will cook for you and bring our specialities to your home." Which is sort of what you expect with a take-away service, but perhaps these things have to be spelt out, as traditional Mallorcan cuisine being ferried around in cardboard containers covered with aluminium on the back of a scooter (or however it is transported) doesn't sound all that traditional. Contemporary meets the traditional, and it comes on a Honda 125.
Take-away is really pizzas, beef chow mein and tikka masala. Pork wrapped in cabbage? It doesn't quite have the take-away ring about it. Traditional cuisine demands traditional modes of eating, as in sitting down in a restaurant. But there again, what is traditional?
This is a question I have been grappling with. Traditional - Mallorcan traditional - is referred to that often that is hard to know what is a tradition and what isn't. The word is interchangeable with "typical". Restaurants do typical/traditional cuisine, troupes perform typical/traditional dance and music, fiestas are typical/traditional. In the case of La Beata in Santa Margalida, this is the most typical of the lot - or so they always say. Girly saint rebuffs the attentions and temptations of the devil, good conquers evil and a whole tradition spawns demons with fire crackers, beasty masks and virgins of the parish parading in white.
The irony of tradition in a Mallorcan style is that it has created something that is distinctly of today - the tradition industry. There is marketing gold to be alchemised from a dry-stone wall, silver to be sold from the singing of a Sibil·la, bronze from coins clattering in the tills of the most ancient of the island's traditions, the Talayotic.
The blurring of the lines between modernity and antiquity invites a question as to the degree to which tradition is forced and with the express purpose of creating a marketing benefit from the historical. The very promotion of tradition, with its narrative captured in the word itself and in the words typical or authentic, is sloganising. The words themselves are marketing tools, directed at both the native and the visiting markets.
The constant reinforcement of tradition for domestic consumption reflects a society still uneasy with modernity. Traditional Mallorcan society, by which one means that before the tourism industrial revolution of the sixties and one that was far more wedded to the land than it is now, still resides in the collective memory. This is unlike Britain, for example, where there is a general lack of tradition and an accommodation with its absence that doesn't require an industry with its marketing plans to force it onto the populace or the tourist.
Of course, there are organisations such as English Heritage which maintain a connection with the past, but the promotion of English and British tradition and culture doesn't have a sense of desperation; that of demanding that the past is held onto.
A key difference, though, between what occurs in long-industrialised countries and an island such as Mallorca where traditional society can be actively remembered lies in the capacity for a tradition industry to flourish. It could never have happened in Britain, for instance, because the wherewithal for such an industry simply didn't exist. And by the time the wherewithal was discovered, it was far too late. Contemporary Mallorca, on the other hand, has that wherewithal, because the invention and development of marketing, and hence the tradition industry, pretty much coincided with the island's industrial revolution.
Mallorca's traditions aren't invented, thanks to the temporal proximity to when traditional society started its decline, but they are an invention of the marketer who flogs them to a tourist market which has forgotten its own traditions.
Tradition is good. That's the message, even if what is described as traditional isn't necessarily exceptional. So it is with much traditional Mallorcan cuisine. Yea, it's ok, but then so are fish and chips. They're traditional, but they don't come with a label attached that demands that they are considered thus. And the constant labelling is the constant reinforcement of a marketing message.
The flyer in the letter-box was selling. But it was also selling, in its curiously contemporary take-away way, that is on behalf of one of Mallorca's strongest industries, its tradition industry.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The flyer was less a promotion for the restaurant and more one for a take-away service. "We will cook for you and bring our specialities to your home." Which is sort of what you expect with a take-away service, but perhaps these things have to be spelt out, as traditional Mallorcan cuisine being ferried around in cardboard containers covered with aluminium on the back of a scooter (or however it is transported) doesn't sound all that traditional. Contemporary meets the traditional, and it comes on a Honda 125.
Take-away is really pizzas, beef chow mein and tikka masala. Pork wrapped in cabbage? It doesn't quite have the take-away ring about it. Traditional cuisine demands traditional modes of eating, as in sitting down in a restaurant. But there again, what is traditional?
This is a question I have been grappling with. Traditional - Mallorcan traditional - is referred to that often that is hard to know what is a tradition and what isn't. The word is interchangeable with "typical". Restaurants do typical/traditional cuisine, troupes perform typical/traditional dance and music, fiestas are typical/traditional. In the case of La Beata in Santa Margalida, this is the most typical of the lot - or so they always say. Girly saint rebuffs the attentions and temptations of the devil, good conquers evil and a whole tradition spawns demons with fire crackers, beasty masks and virgins of the parish parading in white.
The irony of tradition in a Mallorcan style is that it has created something that is distinctly of today - the tradition industry. There is marketing gold to be alchemised from a dry-stone wall, silver to be sold from the singing of a Sibil·la, bronze from coins clattering in the tills of the most ancient of the island's traditions, the Talayotic.
The blurring of the lines between modernity and antiquity invites a question as to the degree to which tradition is forced and with the express purpose of creating a marketing benefit from the historical. The very promotion of tradition, with its narrative captured in the word itself and in the words typical or authentic, is sloganising. The words themselves are marketing tools, directed at both the native and the visiting markets.
The constant reinforcement of tradition for domestic consumption reflects a society still uneasy with modernity. Traditional Mallorcan society, by which one means that before the tourism industrial revolution of the sixties and one that was far more wedded to the land than it is now, still resides in the collective memory. This is unlike Britain, for example, where there is a general lack of tradition and an accommodation with its absence that doesn't require an industry with its marketing plans to force it onto the populace or the tourist.
Of course, there are organisations such as English Heritage which maintain a connection with the past, but the promotion of English and British tradition and culture doesn't have a sense of desperation; that of demanding that the past is held onto.
A key difference, though, between what occurs in long-industrialised countries and an island such as Mallorca where traditional society can be actively remembered lies in the capacity for a tradition industry to flourish. It could never have happened in Britain, for instance, because the wherewithal for such an industry simply didn't exist. And by the time the wherewithal was discovered, it was far too late. Contemporary Mallorca, on the other hand, has that wherewithal, because the invention and development of marketing, and hence the tradition industry, pretty much coincided with the island's industrial revolution.
Mallorca's traditions aren't invented, thanks to the temporal proximity to when traditional society started its decline, but they are an invention of the marketer who flogs them to a tourist market which has forgotten its own traditions.
Tradition is good. That's the message, even if what is described as traditional isn't necessarily exceptional. So it is with much traditional Mallorcan cuisine. Yea, it's ok, but then so are fish and chips. They're traditional, but they don't come with a label attached that demands that they are considered thus. And the constant labelling is the constant reinforcement of a marketing message.
The flyer in the letter-box was selling. But it was also selling, in its curiously contemporary take-away way, that is on behalf of one of Mallorca's strongest industries, its tradition industry.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
And Your Bra And Panties: Fiesta traditions
Cut along to your local fiesta and the last thing you might expect is to be presented with a group of "lads" proudly waving their prosthetic erections around. Depends what type of fiesta you go to though, I suppose. If traditional Mallorcan, then the only big knobs would normally be the local dignitaries as they make their entrances for the fiesta climax. But then how many years count as traditional? In Bunyola, there is a modern fiesta tradition. Come in your underwear, as in attend in your smalls, unless you're the boys with a woody strap-on and you invite the double entendre.
For six years, the Saint Matt fiesta in the town has featured a parade of "ropa interior" - that's bras and pants to you and me. The flaunting of the nearly nude is lubricated by free beer. Bread and circuses. It's an old trick, one I learnt at university: anaethetise the college population with regular and copious, gratis Boddies and Thwaites and they'll be bound to return you at the next elections. Give 'em enough and they'll do anything, like the lads during Bunyola's Friday parade or the lasses concealing their modesty with multi-coloured bouncy baubles.
This is a splendid new tradition. Not for the fact of bare flesh - you can cop an eyeful enough of that on your nearest beach - but because it is not the same. Not the same as all the other fiestas. Want to know what's going to be happening at this year's fiesta? Easy. Look at last year's programme, or the one from the year before. All you need do is change the dates, and with some fiestas you don't even need to do that. Alternatively you can simply look at the fiesta schedule from a different town: pipers a-piping; giants a-dancing; balls-de-botting. Yep, they'll all be there.
There is much to be said for continuity and for the headlining fiesta events that drag in the crowds - be they Moors and Christians having a bundle, the Beata procession of Santa Margalida or the grape fight of Binissalem's Vermar. The year-on-year familiarity of the fiestas can be reassuring in the same way as it is if you go to a different type of party and find that you know everyone. The only trouble is that you end up telling the same jokes, having the same arguments and disappearing behind the shed with the same adulterous missus.
The formulaic introspection of fiesta and the maintenance of tradition are increasingly the source of anxiety as the forces of the generation gap square up to each other in the market or church square. Not completely. There remain the honour and pride of, for instance, being selected as La Beata or as "vermadors" and "vermadores", but the good burghers of the Mallorcan towns are shaking their heads at what they see as a threat to the fiesta tradition - one that comes from the very breaking with tradition.
The night parties of the fiestas are, in their current incarnation, relatively new traditions. But so much concern do they now arouse that you have a town hall such as Sa Pobla scrapping the Districte 54. Partly this was for financial reasons, or so they said; the more pressing reason was the mess and noise. Sa Pobla is not the only town hall which worries for the future of fiestas if the young treat them merely as excuses for massive piss-ups. In Pollensa, much as the town hall tried to limit alcohol in the fiesta centre for the Patrona parties and to ask kindly that the squares and streets weren't used as lavatories, the ambience was awash with less of the romanticism than the brochures might have you believe.
In Sa Pobla this year the fiesta programme was one that could be enjoyed by those of all ages. That was what the town hall reckoned. But was it? Having unleashed the genie of the night parties, it is hard for the town halls to put them back in the bottle without some resentment. Moreover, there must be the temptation to retrench further into the past and into long-established tradition, thus provoking a greater distance between the generations.
In Bunyola the undies parade is for all generations. It is an example of tradition invigoration that is positive in both its harmlessness and its profound silliness, one that is different and at the same time respectful of the population as a whole; well, maybe the mock stiffies might not be. Perhaps, though, too much is made of the night parties and the apparent rejection of tradition by the young. There is another tradition - quite a bit older than Bunyola's. It is the Fornalutx "correbou". If you had spent some time looking at images of the reaction to the recent protest in the village against the bull run, you might have been surprised, shocked even. The reactionaries were predominantly the young. It doesn't add up. The young are meant to reject tradition.
QUIZ -
In your best lascivious voice, who requested "and now your bra and panties"?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
For six years, the Saint Matt fiesta in the town has featured a parade of "ropa interior" - that's bras and pants to you and me. The flaunting of the nearly nude is lubricated by free beer. Bread and circuses. It's an old trick, one I learnt at university: anaethetise the college population with regular and copious, gratis Boddies and Thwaites and they'll be bound to return you at the next elections. Give 'em enough and they'll do anything, like the lads during Bunyola's Friday parade or the lasses concealing their modesty with multi-coloured bouncy baubles.
This is a splendid new tradition. Not for the fact of bare flesh - you can cop an eyeful enough of that on your nearest beach - but because it is not the same. Not the same as all the other fiestas. Want to know what's going to be happening at this year's fiesta? Easy. Look at last year's programme, or the one from the year before. All you need do is change the dates, and with some fiestas you don't even need to do that. Alternatively you can simply look at the fiesta schedule from a different town: pipers a-piping; giants a-dancing; balls-de-botting. Yep, they'll all be there.
There is much to be said for continuity and for the headlining fiesta events that drag in the crowds - be they Moors and Christians having a bundle, the Beata procession of Santa Margalida or the grape fight of Binissalem's Vermar. The year-on-year familiarity of the fiestas can be reassuring in the same way as it is if you go to a different type of party and find that you know everyone. The only trouble is that you end up telling the same jokes, having the same arguments and disappearing behind the shed with the same adulterous missus.
The formulaic introspection of fiesta and the maintenance of tradition are increasingly the source of anxiety as the forces of the generation gap square up to each other in the market or church square. Not completely. There remain the honour and pride of, for instance, being selected as La Beata or as "vermadors" and "vermadores", but the good burghers of the Mallorcan towns are shaking their heads at what they see as a threat to the fiesta tradition - one that comes from the very breaking with tradition.
The night parties of the fiestas are, in their current incarnation, relatively new traditions. But so much concern do they now arouse that you have a town hall such as Sa Pobla scrapping the Districte 54. Partly this was for financial reasons, or so they said; the more pressing reason was the mess and noise. Sa Pobla is not the only town hall which worries for the future of fiestas if the young treat them merely as excuses for massive piss-ups. In Pollensa, much as the town hall tried to limit alcohol in the fiesta centre for the Patrona parties and to ask kindly that the squares and streets weren't used as lavatories, the ambience was awash with less of the romanticism than the brochures might have you believe.
In Sa Pobla this year the fiesta programme was one that could be enjoyed by those of all ages. That was what the town hall reckoned. But was it? Having unleashed the genie of the night parties, it is hard for the town halls to put them back in the bottle without some resentment. Moreover, there must be the temptation to retrench further into the past and into long-established tradition, thus provoking a greater distance between the generations.
In Bunyola the undies parade is for all generations. It is an example of tradition invigoration that is positive in both its harmlessness and its profound silliness, one that is different and at the same time respectful of the population as a whole; well, maybe the mock stiffies might not be. Perhaps, though, too much is made of the night parties and the apparent rejection of tradition by the young. There is another tradition - quite a bit older than Bunyola's. It is the Fornalutx "correbou". If you had spent some time looking at images of the reaction to the recent protest in the village against the bull run, you might have been surprised, shocked even. The reactionaries were predominantly the young. It doesn't add up. The young are meant to reject tradition.
QUIZ -
In your best lascivious voice, who requested "and now your bra and panties"?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
The Horn Of A Dilemma: Correbou and animal traditions
The animal right-ists have been getting into a right old tizz again. There was a barney in Fornalutx on Sunday when the Anima Naturalis group protested against the annual "correbou" in this village near Soller. Locals, in favour of the event, reckoned that the group, all twenty or so of them, acted "provocatively". There was a scrap, the boys in green got involved, a car window was smashed, and insults were hurled.
Anima Naturalis flew solo on Sunday. Other animal-rights groups had condemned the protest, as they believed they were edging towards an agreement with the village mayor to introduce changes to the correbou. That process may have been harmed by the protest. Amenable the mayor may be to changes, but this didn't stop town (village?) hall representatives siding with the pro-correbou-ists.
The correbou involves a bull being hauled, cajoled, run - describe it as you will - through the streets on the end of ropes. In Fornalutx they don't apply fire to the horns, as is the case with similar events in Catalonia, but the animal is taunted before being dragged off to the slaughterhouse, cut up and nosebagged by carnivorous locals. The correbou is primitive, with none of the spectacular and ceremony of the "corrida". There is no pretence of dignity, honour even, being afforded to the bull, as is the case with the bullfight. The animal is, essentially, the object of derision, and there is simply no comparison with other animal events, such as the innately potty duck tossing in Can Picafort.
A letter-writer to yesterday's "Bulletin" took the editor to task for defending both the bullfight and the correbou and for calling for a "compromise" that would satisfy those in favour and those against these events. This compromise was not enunciated; it's an empty call when you don't explain what this might entail. I was more taken aback by the editor's admission that he had never attended a bullfight. One can hold opinions as to bullfights without witnessing them first hand, but without experiencing them one fails to get a complete understanding. Such journalistic incuriosity is staggering.
Nevertheless, some sort of a compromise might yet occur in Fornalutx. The mayor has apparently been talking about shortening the "run" itself, holding it on a working day when fewer would attend and not having the bull crowned with a laurel wreath. None of this will sound like a better deal to the bull if it is still subjected to the taunts and ends up between two chunks of bread. Besides which, it is the kill or the angering of the bull that most spectators of a bullfight or correbou expect, a point the letter-writer makes.
What is clear, though, is that there is a growing movement against alleged animal cruelty during fiestas, be it the bullfight (as in Alcúdia and Muro for example), the correbou, the duck throwing of Can Picafort or the cock on a soapy tree in Pollensa. What is also clear is that emotions are being heightened and, in certain instances, the law being flouted. The traditions are so ingrained, though, that it is difficult to see how they can be undone. There are calls for there to be no animals involved in any fiesta events, but even where the law intervenes, it is obeyed reluctantly (as by Santa Margalida town hall in the case of the ducks). And what happens when and if the law does step in? We now have Tony Blair, who had made a fox-hunting ban an electoral pledge, admitting he got that wrong. And British traditions are nothing like as strong as Mallorcan or Spanish ones. But a question about the law, which is a bit of an ass and a load of bull. How can the ducks of Can Picafort be subject to law on animal protection and the bulls of Fornalutx not? It's hypocritical, and as I have suggested before, the ducks are a far easier target.
Here are photos of the aggro in Fornalutx. The chap who is daubed in black was meant to portray the bull. Some locals reckoned it was racist, thus completely (and probably deliberately) missing the point. What you mostly see in these photos are shots of the Guardia contending with the locals who support the correbou. What seems evident is that this support comes from all age groups, but especially younger ones; something which you might not have expected.
http://comunidad.diariodemallorca.es/galeria-multimedia/Mallorca/Batalla-campal-Fornalutx/17508/1.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Anima Naturalis flew solo on Sunday. Other animal-rights groups had condemned the protest, as they believed they were edging towards an agreement with the village mayor to introduce changes to the correbou. That process may have been harmed by the protest. Amenable the mayor may be to changes, but this didn't stop town (village?) hall representatives siding with the pro-correbou-ists.
The correbou involves a bull being hauled, cajoled, run - describe it as you will - through the streets on the end of ropes. In Fornalutx they don't apply fire to the horns, as is the case with similar events in Catalonia, but the animal is taunted before being dragged off to the slaughterhouse, cut up and nosebagged by carnivorous locals. The correbou is primitive, with none of the spectacular and ceremony of the "corrida". There is no pretence of dignity, honour even, being afforded to the bull, as is the case with the bullfight. The animal is, essentially, the object of derision, and there is simply no comparison with other animal events, such as the innately potty duck tossing in Can Picafort.
A letter-writer to yesterday's "Bulletin" took the editor to task for defending both the bullfight and the correbou and for calling for a "compromise" that would satisfy those in favour and those against these events. This compromise was not enunciated; it's an empty call when you don't explain what this might entail. I was more taken aback by the editor's admission that he had never attended a bullfight. One can hold opinions as to bullfights without witnessing them first hand, but without experiencing them one fails to get a complete understanding. Such journalistic incuriosity is staggering.
Nevertheless, some sort of a compromise might yet occur in Fornalutx. The mayor has apparently been talking about shortening the "run" itself, holding it on a working day when fewer would attend and not having the bull crowned with a laurel wreath. None of this will sound like a better deal to the bull if it is still subjected to the taunts and ends up between two chunks of bread. Besides which, it is the kill or the angering of the bull that most spectators of a bullfight or correbou expect, a point the letter-writer makes.
What is clear, though, is that there is a growing movement against alleged animal cruelty during fiestas, be it the bullfight (as in Alcúdia and Muro for example), the correbou, the duck throwing of Can Picafort or the cock on a soapy tree in Pollensa. What is also clear is that emotions are being heightened and, in certain instances, the law being flouted. The traditions are so ingrained, though, that it is difficult to see how they can be undone. There are calls for there to be no animals involved in any fiesta events, but even where the law intervenes, it is obeyed reluctantly (as by Santa Margalida town hall in the case of the ducks). And what happens when and if the law does step in? We now have Tony Blair, who had made a fox-hunting ban an electoral pledge, admitting he got that wrong. And British traditions are nothing like as strong as Mallorcan or Spanish ones. But a question about the law, which is a bit of an ass and a load of bull. How can the ducks of Can Picafort be subject to law on animal protection and the bulls of Fornalutx not? It's hypocritical, and as I have suggested before, the ducks are a far easier target.
Here are photos of the aggro in Fornalutx. The chap who is daubed in black was meant to portray the bull. Some locals reckoned it was racist, thus completely (and probably deliberately) missing the point. What you mostly see in these photos are shots of the Guardia contending with the locals who support the correbou. What seems evident is that this support comes from all age groups, but especially younger ones; something which you might not have expected.
http://comunidad.diariodemallorca.es/galeria-multimedia/Mallorca/Batalla-campal-Fornalutx/17508/1.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
We Three Kings
The Christmas period is finally over. The kings arrived in the towns and ports of Mallorca on the night of the fifth, performed some adoration, distributed their presents, and yesterday was the culmination of the festive season - for another year.
Distribution of presents. Now, there's a thing. It is typical for the kings to hack around the streets dropping of gifts for children, house by house. Well, this is how it happens in many instances, such as in Muro. Not for the Mallorcans a Santa's grotto, the kings get out and about, put in some legwork, shielding themselves from the rain. It's the tradition, this doling out of gifts. But is it? It's the tradition, the kings parades, such as the one from the port in Alcúdia to the old town. But is it? If Christmas, Santa and presents were largely a Victorian invention in Britain, so the "traditions" of the kings in Mallorca are mainly a thing of the last century. There were "kings" long before, but not in the sense that they have become kings now, taking part in elaborate processions and handing out some Christmas bounty to the young of the towns.
"The Diario" ran a fascinating piece yesterday. The paper spoke to various oldsters in different towns on the island, asking them to recall what the "kings" were like when they were small, back in the 1920s and 1930s. A very different picture to today's emerges from these memories. Not everywhere had a "kings" party or parade, far from it. One chap recalls that at home there was little by way of celebration and that he was an adult when he first witnessed a kings parade and anything like present-giving. He's 84 now, so it would not have been until the 1940s perhaps that there was something resembling the current-day activities, and even then the gifts amounted to little more than a couple of oranges or a chocolate sweet. Others have similar recollections. A gift might have been an ensaimada, if they were lucky, or unlucky as the case may be - depends whether you like lard and sugar. Not everyone was even that lucky. Some of those spoken to don't remember there ever being any presents.
The gifts that today's kings hand out may still not be that grand - they don't stretch to a Wii or a new mobile for every kid in the neighbourhood, at least one hopes not - but they are certainly more grand and there are far more of them. Which does rather beg a question. Who pays for them? The town halls presumably. There may not be the gross commercialism of Christmas in Mallorca by comparison with elsewhere, but Christmas - and the Kings - still come at a price and with a materialistic element that is in keeping with a contemporary culture, thus removed from the so-called tradition, even if this tradition is not quite as it seems.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Distribution of presents. Now, there's a thing. It is typical for the kings to hack around the streets dropping of gifts for children, house by house. Well, this is how it happens in many instances, such as in Muro. Not for the Mallorcans a Santa's grotto, the kings get out and about, put in some legwork, shielding themselves from the rain. It's the tradition, this doling out of gifts. But is it? It's the tradition, the kings parades, such as the one from the port in Alcúdia to the old town. But is it? If Christmas, Santa and presents were largely a Victorian invention in Britain, so the "traditions" of the kings in Mallorca are mainly a thing of the last century. There were "kings" long before, but not in the sense that they have become kings now, taking part in elaborate processions and handing out some Christmas bounty to the young of the towns.
"The Diario" ran a fascinating piece yesterday. The paper spoke to various oldsters in different towns on the island, asking them to recall what the "kings" were like when they were small, back in the 1920s and 1930s. A very different picture to today's emerges from these memories. Not everywhere had a "kings" party or parade, far from it. One chap recalls that at home there was little by way of celebration and that he was an adult when he first witnessed a kings parade and anything like present-giving. He's 84 now, so it would not have been until the 1940s perhaps that there was something resembling the current-day activities, and even then the gifts amounted to little more than a couple of oranges or a chocolate sweet. Others have similar recollections. A gift might have been an ensaimada, if they were lucky, or unlucky as the case may be - depends whether you like lard and sugar. Not everyone was even that lucky. Some of those spoken to don't remember there ever being any presents.
The gifts that today's kings hand out may still not be that grand - they don't stretch to a Wii or a new mobile for every kid in the neighbourhood, at least one hopes not - but they are certainly more grand and there are far more of them. Which does rather beg a question. Who pays for them? The town halls presumably. There may not be the gross commercialism of Christmas in Mallorca by comparison with elsewhere, but Christmas - and the Kings - still come at a price and with a materialistic element that is in keeping with a contemporary culture, thus removed from the so-called tradition, even if this tradition is not quite as it seems.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Somebody Called Me Sebastian
You have to go to the Spanish press to get anything that is especially critical when it comes to local issues. It would be most unlikely that you would read anything like a piece in "Ultima Hora" yesterday in the English press, a piece that had a right old go at Palma town hall for its organisation of this year's Sant Sebastià jollies. To remind you - San Sebastià is one of the biggest gigs of the year. Sebastià (Sebastian, obviously) is the patron saint of Palma. Some of you may recall I explained how he came to be so once before on the blog, but it maybe bears repetition from three years ago, so here goes ...
"Sebastian, originally from France, was a Roman soldier, martyred for his Christian faith. That he became Palma’s patron saint was pure chance; it wasn’t as if he had any association with the place, while his crypt is to be found in Rome. But in the first part of the sixteenth century (1523 is generally considered to be the year), there was a particularly bad dose of the plague knocking around. Anyway, or so the story goes, one Manuel Suriavisqui, the owner of a bone from Sebastian, pitched up in Palma at the time of the plague, together with the bone. And what do you know...? That old bone helped to quell the plague. And so Sebastian was declared the patron of Palma."
Sebastian may have been hijacked by other parts of the island (any excuse for a fiesta anywhere is gratefully accepted), but in Palma he, and his celebrations, remain hugely significant. Last night was the music night, with the squares in the centre open to acts of varying sorts. Last year there was an international flavour - ELO, for example. This year there was not. Last year they said, after the event, that more needed to be done in terms of international promotion and attracting an international audience to Palma for Sebastian. This year they seem to have overlooked this.
"Ultima Hora" criticises the organisers for not knowing what the people of Palma want, for the lack of international acts, for lower quality than in previous years. It points out that there were few even national performers; most were local and that meant Catalan. There seems to have been a politicisation of the music of Sebastian. Maybe it was just because Palma couldn't afford anyone else, or maybe it was propitious and allowed them to justify a much more parochial approach. If so, they have made a big mistake. Sebastian is a cracking event, and the town hall knows that it deserves more international attention, so why fall back on the purely local? Whatever happened to that increased international promotion? Yea, ok, perhaps it's just the economy determining this year's event, but perhaps - and it wouldn't be the first time I've said it - the Mallorcans just don't want foreigners at their do's.
And perhaps they don't want them because there are sufficient bodies knocking about as it is. At the Sa Pobla witches night event, 8,000 made use of the special train services alone. In Muro, for the blessing of the animals, there were some 5,000 - people, that is, as opposed to animals. The numbers who turn up, year in, year out, may not make a lot of sense when you consider that these events are basically the same, year in, year out. But then, you read something else in "Ultima Hora", something in Catalan that, under the heading "Sant Antoni i Sant Sebastià", begins "som un poble" (we are a people), and which you know is going to be a reflection on the changes of local society and traditions - and it is. It is also not a million miles away from what I have said before about the way in which they keep hold of their traditions here as some form of mass psychological buffer to the changes that have occurred. In fact, it is very close to what I have said, which, I guess, is rather reassuring - for me, at any rate. And this may explain why they - the Mallorcans - are indifferent, antagonistic perhaps to those traditions being internationalised either through content or by those in attendance. And then someone goes and complains about not enough being done for winter tourism ...
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Just Stand Up", Mariah Carey, Beyoncé et al (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfbxxd01mzk). Today's title - it was the first single by whom? Quite unlike what one came to associate with him/them.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
"Sebastian, originally from France, was a Roman soldier, martyred for his Christian faith. That he became Palma’s patron saint was pure chance; it wasn’t as if he had any association with the place, while his crypt is to be found in Rome. But in the first part of the sixteenth century (1523 is generally considered to be the year), there was a particularly bad dose of the plague knocking around. Anyway, or so the story goes, one Manuel Suriavisqui, the owner of a bone from Sebastian, pitched up in Palma at the time of the plague, together with the bone. And what do you know...? That old bone helped to quell the plague. And so Sebastian was declared the patron of Palma."
Sebastian may have been hijacked by other parts of the island (any excuse for a fiesta anywhere is gratefully accepted), but in Palma he, and his celebrations, remain hugely significant. Last night was the music night, with the squares in the centre open to acts of varying sorts. Last year there was an international flavour - ELO, for example. This year there was not. Last year they said, after the event, that more needed to be done in terms of international promotion and attracting an international audience to Palma for Sebastian. This year they seem to have overlooked this.
"Ultima Hora" criticises the organisers for not knowing what the people of Palma want, for the lack of international acts, for lower quality than in previous years. It points out that there were few even national performers; most were local and that meant Catalan. There seems to have been a politicisation of the music of Sebastian. Maybe it was just because Palma couldn't afford anyone else, or maybe it was propitious and allowed them to justify a much more parochial approach. If so, they have made a big mistake. Sebastian is a cracking event, and the town hall knows that it deserves more international attention, so why fall back on the purely local? Whatever happened to that increased international promotion? Yea, ok, perhaps it's just the economy determining this year's event, but perhaps - and it wouldn't be the first time I've said it - the Mallorcans just don't want foreigners at their do's.
And perhaps they don't want them because there are sufficient bodies knocking about as it is. At the Sa Pobla witches night event, 8,000 made use of the special train services alone. In Muro, for the blessing of the animals, there were some 5,000 - people, that is, as opposed to animals. The numbers who turn up, year in, year out, may not make a lot of sense when you consider that these events are basically the same, year in, year out. But then, you read something else in "Ultima Hora", something in Catalan that, under the heading "Sant Antoni i Sant Sebastià", begins "som un poble" (we are a people), and which you know is going to be a reflection on the changes of local society and traditions - and it is. It is also not a million miles away from what I have said before about the way in which they keep hold of their traditions here as some form of mass psychological buffer to the changes that have occurred. In fact, it is very close to what I have said, which, I guess, is rather reassuring - for me, at any rate. And this may explain why they - the Mallorcans - are indifferent, antagonistic perhaps to those traditions being internationalised either through content or by those in attendance. And then someone goes and complains about not enough being done for winter tourism ...
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Just Stand Up", Mariah Carey, Beyoncé et al (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfbxxd01mzk). Today's title - it was the first single by whom? Quite unlike what one came to associate with him/them.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Saturday, October 11, 2008
A Dance To The Music Of Time
There was a "ball de bot" the other evening in Playa de Muro. Well, there was meant to have been, but Thursday's wild weather may have forced its abandonment. Whatever. The ball de bot, a staple of fiestas, is also dragged onto the municipal building forecourt or onto other places, like the Paseo Marítimo in Alcúdia, to act as a piece of Mallorcan authenticity to be enjoyed by local and tourist alike.
The ball de bot is at the heart of Mallorca's folkloric traditions. It can be compared to Morris dancing, but only in the sense that it is a form of folk dance; it doesn't have the weirdness of the Morris dance. And generally it is not performed by men with beards. There is, however, a potential link - the Morris name is widely assumed to be connected with the Moors; the Morris dance is a kind of distant cousin perhaps to the ball de bot.
The survival and omnipresence of the ball de bot at the fiestas are testimony to the strength of the local folk tradition, and, unlike Morris dancing, it doesn't attract piss-taking; it's all quite serious. A while ago, one of the strange attempts at defining Englishness included Morris dancing as an indication thereof. It was wrong-headed as it is not a tradition taken seriously by most people. Only its very oddness and eccentricity could be said to be typical of a strand of Englishness; the dance is almost beside the point when set against the sight of men in peculiar outfits waving hankies. The ball de bot is neither odd nor eccentric; it is typically Mallorcan for the dance alone.
Attend a fiesta or fair locally, and at some point there will be a ball de bot, often performed by the same troupe - Sarau Alcudienc - which gets its fair share of bot gigs throughout the fiesta season and as part of the promenade entertainment for the masses in summer. But it is not the only ever-present. Others are the local bag-pipe players ("xeremiers") and the giants ("gegants"). Each town or village seems to have its own giants. Pop in, for example, to Muro town hall and they are standing there, huge and surreal in the reception area. One time when they were hauled down to Playa de Muro to put in a guest appearance, they were then left lying on their backs in the reception of the municipal building; sleeping it off following the revelries of the local fiesta while tourists, town hall staff and members of the Guardia Civil navigated courses around their prone bodies.
And there is more surrealism in the form of the "caparrot", another type of giant but one with head masks that has come to embrace satire. Typically, local politicians might find the rip being taken out of them by a caparrot, and, let's face it, there is plenty to take the rip out of, though how a head mask can quite convey the sense of money being buried in a garden is open to some wild imagination.
It is a fair question to ask quite why these traditions have held sway. I read the other day about a Mallorca of a childhood perhaps some 40 or 50 years ago. While the fiestas formed a part of that time, the reminiscing was not a million miles away from an English childhood, certainly one in less urban or rural areas. While there weren't the fiestas as in Mallorca, there were the fetes, the fairs, the traditions of Pancake Day, Guy Fawkes and May Day. These survive, but have been corporatised in the case of Bonfire Night, while others are probably regarded as being rather quaint or absurd in a more cynical culture. The obvious difference lies with the religious basis of the fiesta, and yet devout Catholicism holds far less influence than was once the case.
I have suggested previously that perhaps the survival of Mallorcan traditions is a reaction to change; a mass psychology of introspection that seeks reassurance in a past when the present suggests the loss of that past. Or maybe it is simply a case of relativeness in terms of time. Mallorca has only been "industrialised" for some 50 years; an essentially agrarian society half a century ago still maintains the links to the traditions of the small villages and towns. Mallorca became a consumerist society later as well, not just because of the backwardness and isolation of the island until relatively recently but also because of the inhibition of much of the Franco era. And in the fiestas one might even divine a certain post-Franco reaction. Anything regional, especially if it was couched in a Catalan tongue, was something the Generalissimo was ill-disposed towards, and accordingly some of the traditions were repressed.
There is no sense that these traditions are about to be lost. The still closeness of the communities, despite the wealth that has been accrued since the tourist industrialisation, reinforces the traditions. There is also no sense in which the traditions are forced, as in we must at all costs not allow our traditions to die out. They happen because they always happen. The fiestas may be repetitious - year after year they have a distinct sameyness - but there are always the giants and the pipers and the ball de bot. Same every year. And not about to change.
Here is a youtube link for a ball de bot - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0XEXSekpd4
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Splodgenessabounds - "Two Pints Of Lager And ..." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1658Mfhoyw). Today's title - a famous 12-volume series of books by?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The ball de bot is at the heart of Mallorca's folkloric traditions. It can be compared to Morris dancing, but only in the sense that it is a form of folk dance; it doesn't have the weirdness of the Morris dance. And generally it is not performed by men with beards. There is, however, a potential link - the Morris name is widely assumed to be connected with the Moors; the Morris dance is a kind of distant cousin perhaps to the ball de bot.
The survival and omnipresence of the ball de bot at the fiestas are testimony to the strength of the local folk tradition, and, unlike Morris dancing, it doesn't attract piss-taking; it's all quite serious. A while ago, one of the strange attempts at defining Englishness included Morris dancing as an indication thereof. It was wrong-headed as it is not a tradition taken seriously by most people. Only its very oddness and eccentricity could be said to be typical of a strand of Englishness; the dance is almost beside the point when set against the sight of men in peculiar outfits waving hankies. The ball de bot is neither odd nor eccentric; it is typically Mallorcan for the dance alone.
Attend a fiesta or fair locally, and at some point there will be a ball de bot, often performed by the same troupe - Sarau Alcudienc - which gets its fair share of bot gigs throughout the fiesta season and as part of the promenade entertainment for the masses in summer. But it is not the only ever-present. Others are the local bag-pipe players ("xeremiers") and the giants ("gegants"). Each town or village seems to have its own giants. Pop in, for example, to Muro town hall and they are standing there, huge and surreal in the reception area. One time when they were hauled down to Playa de Muro to put in a guest appearance, they were then left lying on their backs in the reception of the municipal building; sleeping it off following the revelries of the local fiesta while tourists, town hall staff and members of the Guardia Civil navigated courses around their prone bodies.
And there is more surrealism in the form of the "caparrot", another type of giant but one with head masks that has come to embrace satire. Typically, local politicians might find the rip being taken out of them by a caparrot, and, let's face it, there is plenty to take the rip out of, though how a head mask can quite convey the sense of money being buried in a garden is open to some wild imagination.
It is a fair question to ask quite why these traditions have held sway. I read the other day about a Mallorca of a childhood perhaps some 40 or 50 years ago. While the fiestas formed a part of that time, the reminiscing was not a million miles away from an English childhood, certainly one in less urban or rural areas. While there weren't the fiestas as in Mallorca, there were the fetes, the fairs, the traditions of Pancake Day, Guy Fawkes and May Day. These survive, but have been corporatised in the case of Bonfire Night, while others are probably regarded as being rather quaint or absurd in a more cynical culture. The obvious difference lies with the religious basis of the fiesta, and yet devout Catholicism holds far less influence than was once the case.
I have suggested previously that perhaps the survival of Mallorcan traditions is a reaction to change; a mass psychology of introspection that seeks reassurance in a past when the present suggests the loss of that past. Or maybe it is simply a case of relativeness in terms of time. Mallorca has only been "industrialised" for some 50 years; an essentially agrarian society half a century ago still maintains the links to the traditions of the small villages and towns. Mallorca became a consumerist society later as well, not just because of the backwardness and isolation of the island until relatively recently but also because of the inhibition of much of the Franco era. And in the fiestas one might even divine a certain post-Franco reaction. Anything regional, especially if it was couched in a Catalan tongue, was something the Generalissimo was ill-disposed towards, and accordingly some of the traditions were repressed.
There is no sense that these traditions are about to be lost. The still closeness of the communities, despite the wealth that has been accrued since the tourist industrialisation, reinforces the traditions. There is also no sense in which the traditions are forced, as in we must at all costs not allow our traditions to die out. They happen because they always happen. The fiestas may be repetitious - year after year they have a distinct sameyness - but there are always the giants and the pipers and the ball de bot. Same every year. And not about to change.
Here is a youtube link for a ball de bot - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0XEXSekpd4
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Splodgenessabounds - "Two Pints Of Lager And ..." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1658Mfhoyw). Today's title - a famous 12-volume series of books by?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Monday, January 14, 2008
Race With The Devil
This is a week for fiestas. I know, I know, when is it not a week for fiestas, but this is a big one. To have two such major occasions in one week in January says much about Mallorca; much about the importance of tradition and much about the way in which the calendar is defined by these occasions. The year, especially in winter when there is less work to be done, is mapped out by reference to these fiestas. In October and November, the various fairs across the island and Hallowe’en at the end of October; in November, All Saints; in December, the holidays of Constitution Day and Immaculate Conception and then Christmas and New Year’s Eve; in January, Three Kings and Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastia. Mallorcan time and the Mallorcan calendar revolve around fiestas. Once the January events are finished, attention turns to the upcoming season. Winter, just as much as summer, is fiesta time.
Sant Antoni occurs on the night of 16 January and into 17 January, At its spectacular heart, are the fires and the fire-runs (correfocs). Streets are given over to fires. Mounds of earth on which fires are lit. The night of the 16th is when the devils run in the streets. Most towns have a Sant Antoni event – Alcudia, Pollensa, Muro. All of them celebrate the occasion. But there is no more significant event than the “Nit Bruixa” (witch night) of Sa Pobla, one that attracts folk from across the island.
Sant Sebastia (20 January) is essentially a Palma event, as it celebrates the patron saint of Palma, but it is also celebrated elsewhere. This year, the grand fireworks display in Palma has been called off in favour of a correfoc as this is, according to Palma council worthies, more in keeping with Mallorcan traditions. Perhaps so.
Both Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastia are very much Mallorcan events. Foreign visitors there may be, certainly for Sant Sebastia, but they are limited, and this year I know some are disappointed at the lack of a firework display, a disappointment that will hardly be offset by the dubious attraction of the current line-up of the Electric Light Orchestra.
But why are they not more international? When we hear so much about Mallorcan culture, why is not more, much more, made in particular of the demonology? Here is something that captures the imagination, far more so than the vagueness of other so-called Mallorcan culture. Demonology and devils, things of the night; these are things of the human spirit, understood by all other cultures. And they find a special voice in the fire-runs and the witch night right here in Mallorca.
What if Sa Pobla were to be transformed into a centre of the devil, with a physical centre, a museum or better still some grand attraction with interactive fire-runs and resident devils? A vast digital witch night, a nightmare of temptation. What if this were to be marketed as the ultimate horror? What if there were special packages for Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastian and then other packages outside of the one week in January that promised terror and thrills. This is the stuff of the digital age. Play Station played large. And not just digital.
Or would there be objections? Would the Mallorcans want even more of their traditions internationalised? They can be terribly parochial. Would the promotion of the Devil be sacrilegious for a society that runs with the Devil but only because of the temptations that the Devil placed in front of the God-fearing? The fire-run of the Beata fiesta in Santa Margalida for instance celebrates just this – the temptation of Santa Catalina by Satan.
I don’t know the answer, but if they want cultural tourism then let them promote real culture, real culture that everyone can understand and that everyone might want to enjoy, and for which everyone might be tempted to come to Mallorca in winter. A bit of imagination anyone?
QUIZ
Yesterday – Sylvia, and she was Swedish. Today’s title – a bit to choose from I fancy, but this is a title by one of the original rockers.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sant Antoni occurs on the night of 16 January and into 17 January, At its spectacular heart, are the fires and the fire-runs (correfocs). Streets are given over to fires. Mounds of earth on which fires are lit. The night of the 16th is when the devils run in the streets. Most towns have a Sant Antoni event – Alcudia, Pollensa, Muro. All of them celebrate the occasion. But there is no more significant event than the “Nit Bruixa” (witch night) of Sa Pobla, one that attracts folk from across the island.
Sant Sebastia (20 January) is essentially a Palma event, as it celebrates the patron saint of Palma, but it is also celebrated elsewhere. This year, the grand fireworks display in Palma has been called off in favour of a correfoc as this is, according to Palma council worthies, more in keeping with Mallorcan traditions. Perhaps so.
Both Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastia are very much Mallorcan events. Foreign visitors there may be, certainly for Sant Sebastia, but they are limited, and this year I know some are disappointed at the lack of a firework display, a disappointment that will hardly be offset by the dubious attraction of the current line-up of the Electric Light Orchestra.
But why are they not more international? When we hear so much about Mallorcan culture, why is not more, much more, made in particular of the demonology? Here is something that captures the imagination, far more so than the vagueness of other so-called Mallorcan culture. Demonology and devils, things of the night; these are things of the human spirit, understood by all other cultures. And they find a special voice in the fire-runs and the witch night right here in Mallorca.
What if Sa Pobla were to be transformed into a centre of the devil, with a physical centre, a museum or better still some grand attraction with interactive fire-runs and resident devils? A vast digital witch night, a nightmare of temptation. What if this were to be marketed as the ultimate horror? What if there were special packages for Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastian and then other packages outside of the one week in January that promised terror and thrills. This is the stuff of the digital age. Play Station played large. And not just digital.
Or would there be objections? Would the Mallorcans want even more of their traditions internationalised? They can be terribly parochial. Would the promotion of the Devil be sacrilegious for a society that runs with the Devil but only because of the temptations that the Devil placed in front of the God-fearing? The fire-run of the Beata fiesta in Santa Margalida for instance celebrates just this – the temptation of Santa Catalina by Satan.
I don’t know the answer, but if they want cultural tourism then let them promote real culture, real culture that everyone can understand and that everyone might want to enjoy, and for which everyone might be tempted to come to Mallorca in winter. A bit of imagination anyone?
QUIZ
Yesterday – Sylvia, and she was Swedish. Today’s title – a bit to choose from I fancy, but this is a title by one of the original rockers.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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